


Auspicious Beginnings

by Elara_Moon



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It, Gen, Happy Ending, Humor, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2020-11-08 10:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 56,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20834195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elara_Moon/pseuds/Elara_Moon
Summary: A CYOA SI with Power Manipulator, from the points of view of all of the people who have to deal with them.





	1. Anything You Can Do

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by SmartAlek on Spacebattles.

_January 14, 2011_

_Battery_

Battery glanced through the glass panel in the middle of the door into one of the PRT Headquarters’ small interview rooms. Inside was a young woman in her early twenties, sitting calmly at the table across from one of the many PRT bureaucrats. She was going by Auspice, according to the message they’d gotten from the PRT. She wore normal clothes, jeans and a T-shirt, and one of the domino masks the PRT kept a stock of, which meant she’d come unmasked.

Velocity leaned in to look over Battery’s shoulder.

“Think that’s her?” he said.

“It must be,” Battery said.

She had been surprised, to say the least, when the PRT requested one of the Protectorate heroes’ assistance with power testing and verification. Apparently, they had somebody claiming to be a parahuman who could copy others’ powers upon touching them, but who didn’t actually have any copied powers yet. As such, they wanted a hero to prove or disprove the person’s claims.

It was probably a false alarm. Even in a world with parahumans, a power like that seemed far fetched, and it wasn’t that uncommon for people to claim to be parahumans, only to be proven perfectly normal humans. The Protectorate paid well, so there were a lot of scammers. However, if it was _true_, then they couldn’t afford to miss it. And it was simple enough to prove, with parahuman assistance.

And Battery and Velocity were the only two heroes around who weren’t on patrol, so they got the honor of catching a fake. Such a joy. Even if it turned out to be true, Battery wasn’t sure how she felt about potentially letting somebody copy her power, especially given the, well, _origin_, of her power. Fortunately, Velocity seemed pretty enthused about it.

“Come on, let’s go in,” Velocity said, brushing past Battery to get to the door.

As Velocity entered, Battery following behind him, the PRT official glanced back over his shoulder, then stood. Auspice, after a beat, did the same. Battery closed the door behind them, while Velocity made his way over to their visitor.

“Hello. I’m Velocity,” he said. “Auspice, right?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m going by, at least for now. Not sure if I want to keep it yet,” Auspice said with a nod. “Hi.”

“Hey. I’m Battery,” she said.

Auspice nodded again.

“All right, no point beating around the bush. You say you can copy parahuman powers?” Velocity said.

Auspice nodded yet again. “Yes. When I touch somebody, I get a perfect copy of their power. It doesn’t affect the person in question at all when I copy powers,” she said. “I think I can also alter powers I’ve copied, to an extent. Not sure to what extent yet.”

“There’s no time limit on the powers? No limitations? Like, you can only do three at a time, or something?” Battery said.

“No. No limitations. Anything the person I copy the power from can do, I can do. And I don’t think there’s a limit on how many I can copy or use at a time.”

Battery raised her eyebrows, knowing they were hidden under her visor. She had to take a moment to consider the implications, if that was true. It probably wasn’t true; they had no proof of such ridiculous powers, and even the only precedents for such a thing being possible (maybe Eidolon, maybe the Fairy Queen) had limitations.

“But you haven’t actually copied any powers yet,” Battery said.

“Well, no,” Auspice said with a shrug. “Not that easy to go around poking capes, you know? But I know how my power works.”

“Either way, if it’s true, that is an incredibly powerful ability,” Velocity said.

Auspice smiled. “I know,” she said simply.

“All right, well, time to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak,” Velocity said. He held out one hand to her. “Prove it. Copy my power.”

Auspice hesitated briefly. Battery narrowed her eyes. She was just beginning to suspect that Auspice was lying and had just realized she was about to be caught when Auspice reached out. She tapped her hand against Velocity’s.

“That’s awesome,” she murmured as though to herself.

Then she was in the corner of the room. Battery had been in the Protectorate with Velocity too long to jump, but she did blink sharply.

“Well,” Battery said. “Either you did copy Velocity’s power, or you’ve got some kind of teleportation.”

Auspice smiled again.

“Nah, I could track her; it definitely _looked_ like my power,” Velocity said. He was starting to sound really excited, now.

Battery could definitely understand. It was kind of worrying, but to have such a powerful cape -- somebody who could copy _every other power_ they encountered -- on their side… That could be huge.

Now, to prove she didn’t just have a power like Velocity’s.

“Copy my power, too,” Battery said, holding her own hand out.

Her power and Velocity’s were also pretty similar -- they were both considered speedsters -- but there were enough differences, too. Battery’s charge gave her enhanced strength, which would be even more obvious when compared to Velocity’s power dampening his effect on his surroundings.

Auspice nodded. “Sure, but I’m not sure how to prove I’ve copied your power?”

Battery paused. Right. Her power’s speed enhancement could probably be faked with Velocity’s power -- or a similar Mover power -- and the other aspects were a little destructive.

“There are facilities for power testing in the building. We’ll take you there,” Battery said.

“Okay, cool,” Auspice said. She gestured. “Lead the way.”

Ten minutes later, they were safely ensconced in a Brute-rated power testing room. Battery wasn’t a Brute, but she could do some pretty good damage while she was charged up. ‘Brute-rated’, in this context, actually meant, ‘lots of things of varying sturdiness to smash’. There, Battery let Auspice tap her on the hand, same as she’d done to Velocity.

Auspice paused for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, so I’ll just… break some stuff,” she said.

“Go for it,” Battery said, building up her own charge to make sure she could track Auspice.

“Let’s see, not using Velocity’s power, since that would mess things up...” Auspice muttered to herself.

Then she shot forward in a move eerily similar to what Battery had seen herself do in videos, at a speed only a few people in Brockton Bay could match. Taking full advantage of the enhanced durability of the Breaker state, Auspice smashed right through the nearest block of cement with a spray of cement fragments, and then through two more and a sheet of metal before she ran out of charge and came to a stop.

Auspice laughed out loud, clapping once in obvious delight. “That was awesome,” she said, then turned around to face Battery and Velocity. “So, how about it? Have I proven myself sufficiently?”

Battery exchanged a glance with Velocity. It was very unlikely for two powers to be that similar, and Battery found it hard to believe that there was any one power that could imitate both hers and Velocity’s. Especially given the origin of Battery’s power.

“Do my power again,” Velocity said. “Hit something while using it. Wait, no, actually--” He stooped to pick up one of the larger pieces of rubble, which was about the size of a baseball, and set it on a table. “--try and pick this up.”

“Sure thing,” Auspice said agreeably.

To Battery, it seemed as though Auspice then teleported over to the table, moving so quickly that Battery couldn’t track her at all until she came to a stop. She trusted that Velocity could track her. For probably thirty seconds, Auspice tried hard to pick up the rubble, only succeeding in making it roll around the table.

Then she deactivated the power with a huff. “Well, that’s frustrating,” she said, but her tone was much calmer than Battery would have expected from the words. She looked from Battery to Velocity and back. “So, anything else?”

Battery thought about it. She realized that she was actually convinced; there was nothing else Auspice could do to make her believe her more than she already did, at least not without copying more powers. If she could also do some of the powers that were less like Battery’s and Velocity’s, like Miss Militia’s, it would make it more believable.

“Well, no, I think I’m good, actually. I believe you,” Velocity said, sounding a bit faint now. “I… think I should go talk to Armsmaster. Battery?”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Battery said.

Once they told Armsmaster, that made it -- Auspice -- officially Not Their Problem. Battery did not want to be the one in charge of making decisions regarding a person who could, presumably, copy _any_ other parahuman’s power. Telling Armsmaster was definitely a good idea.

Oblivious to Battery’s thoughts, Auspice smiled brilliantly. “Great!”

_January 14, 2011_

_Emily Piggot_

Emily sighed heavily and rubbed at her temples with her fingers. The girl sitting innocently in the chair in front of Emily’s desk continued sitting innocently, in the process continuing to force her existence on Emily. Armsmaster stood beside the girl, considerably less innocently.

‘Auspice’. A twenty-two year old girl who now possessed the powers of just about every Protectorate cape in Emily’s branch. The only one she was missing was Triumph. But she wanted to join the Protectorate. That was good, Emily reminded herself. That meant she wanted to be a hero, and that she was also willing to put herself under Emily’s authority, and under the authority of those above Emily.

Emily tried to be comforted by that fact. It was difficult, when faced with yet another potentially disastrous parahuman.

In any case, that wasn’t even Emily’s problem right now. No, she had _more_ problems.

“You’re… from another dimension,” Emily said, dully.

She was repeating Auspice’s explanation of why she apparently didn’t exist and had absolutely no records at all.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Auspice said.

“Like Earth Aleph, we think,” Armsmaster said. He was very firmly on the girl’s side, and pushing even harder than she was to get her into the Protectorate.

“Yeah, something like that,” Auspice said agreeably. “I’m not sure exactly what to call it.”

Emily sighed again. Sometimes, she truly questioned whether or not her job was worth the headaches.

The most likely explanation, she felt, was that Auspice simply didn’t want to tell them her identity, and was therefore lying about it. But was that a big enough concern to _not_ bring her into the Protectorate, when she already wanted to?

No. Given her power, it definitely wasn’t, Emily decided. Still, she could ask a few more questions.

“What’s your civilian name?”

“You won’t be able to find me if you look it up,” Auspice said, frowning slightly. She’d already unmasked upon request. Emily wondered why this was different. “Well, you might find other people with the same name.”

“Tell me anyway,” Emily said.

Auspice shrugged. “All right, sure. My name is Jennifer Williams.”

“Truth,” Armsmaster put in, because he was a traitorous, side-picking --

Emily was fine. Everything was fine.

She was going to have to figure that out. Determine whether or not there were records of a Jennifer Williams that matched Auspice. If not, figure out how to hire somebody with no legal identity. Emily didn’t really have much choice in the matter; she had to.

“Okay. Auspice, explain your power again. List the powers you’ve collected --” Emily glared at Armsmaster, who looked unapologetic. “-- so far. Armsmaster, I’m going to need a report from you and the rest of the Protectorate members who have had contact with Auspice.”

Emily wanted to make sure this was _well-documented_ before she sent it upward.

“Yes, Director,” Armsmaster said, nodding.

“Good. Now, Auspice, if you will?” Emily said. She turned on a recording device, which she had foolishly neglected the previous time Auspice had explained her power.

Armsmaster was almost certainly recording as well, and Emily was reasonably certain that at least one of his recordings of Auspice’s explanation would end up in his report, but she wanted to have her own, as well.

If Auspice was annoyed at having to explain again for what was probably the fifth or sixth time, it didn’t show. “Sure. My power lets me copy other people’s powers upon touching them,” she started, voice almost monotone, like she was reading off a list. “The other person isn’t affected at all by me copying their power. I get a perfect copy of their power which does not have any limitations or a time limit. I can also alter my own copy of other powers to an extent. I currently have the powers of Battery, Velocity, Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Assault, and Dauntless.” She paused briefly, then added, “Oh, and I altered my copy of Battery’s power.”

Emily tried not to react. Auspice hadn’t mentioned _that_ before. “Explain what you mean by that.”

“Okay, well, Battery’s power lets her build up a ‘charge’, right, which she can then expend to enhance herself. For her power, the proper version, she has to concentrate on ‘recharging’ and it takes like twelve seconds or so for her to max out her charge. I didn’t really like that, so I changed it so that the charge builds up automatically, constantly, without needing any concentration on it. It does it slower now, though. It takes probably a minute to max out,” Auspice explained. “I can’t really _improve_ powers; if I make it better in one way, I have to make it worse in another.”

She sounded a bit crestfallen, as though having _multiple powers_ wasn’t already good enough. Emily restrained herself from rolling her eyes or otherwise expressing her exasperation at potentially the most powerful parahuman she’d ever met. She shuddered to think what this girl could do once she’d collected more powers. And she was upset about her _limitations_. The very few she even had.

“Is that all? The full explanation of your current capabilities?” Emily asked, once she could trust herself to speak.

Auspice nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Okay. Thank you for your cooperation,” Emily said. She turned off her recorder. “You’re both dismissed.”

Auspice blinked and raised her eyebrows, but fortunately Armsmaster took that as the ‘get the hell out of my office’ that it was meant to be.

“Yes, Director,” he said, and turned to leave, boots clunking heavily against the floor.

Auspice still looked a bit surprised, but she parroted, playfully, “Yes, Director,” and followed Armsmaster out.

Emily rested her face in her hands and resisted the urge to go for her secret stash of alcohol that her doctors would be furious at her for having. She allowed herself one minute to wallow in despair and frustration, and then she got back to work.

She had employees to order to figure out how to hire a person who didn’t exist, a report to write up for the higher-ups, and security issues to figure out.


	2. (Not So) Super Secret Organization

_January 15, 2011_

_Rebecca Costa-Brown_

Highly classified documents weren’t uncommon. As the Chief-Director of the PRT, Rebecca saw many such documents; ones that only the highest-ranking members of the PRT were allowed access to.

Emily Piggot, Director of the PRT ENE, had just directed her to one such document. It was classified to the directors of the PRT and Legend, as the head of the Protectorate, only. Even Alexandria and Eidolon didn’t officially have permission to see it -- though everyone knew, if Legend was given access, he would almost certainly tell the other two. Rebecca glanced over the basic information. It was a new hire report for the Protectorate ENE, finalized just that morning.

Rebecca wasn’t entirely sure why Director Piggot wanted her to see such a thing -- she was far too busy to read through every new Protectorate cape’s file -- but then, new hire reports weren’t usually so highly classified, either. Opening the report, Rebecca skimmed through. Then she read it properly. If not for her power-given perfect memory, she would have read through it again.

**Pseudonym: Auspice**

**Name: Williams, Jennifer**

**Power rating: Not yet rated (EDIT: Presumed Trump 10+ --Director Piggot and Armsmaster)**

**Power description: Able to copy other parahumans’ powers upon contact with them. Copied powers appear identical to the original and seem to last indefinitely. Subject also indicates the ability to alter their copied powers at will. See attachments for more details.**

In the files attached to it were reports by, it seemed, every current member of the Protectorate ENE, as well as two audio files -- one from Director Piggot and one from Armsmaster. Rebecca played through both of them, finding that they were both of a woman, presumably Auspice herself, explaining her power, although they seemed to be from different conversations.

Rebecca leaned back in her chair, mind working furiously. The appearance of somebody like Auspice could be huge. It was also very suspect, Rebecca knew. A natural Trigger with a power like that seemed impossible. Still, the _potential_. The possibilities.

Especially that one, innocuous line about being able to _alter their copied powers_.

Rebecca needed to call a meeting. She stood from her chair and stepped away from her desk.

“Door me.”

_January 16, 2011_

_Emily Piggot_

Emily couldn’t say she was surprised when, the day after her report about Auspice, Alexandria strode into her office. She wasn’t _pleased_, but she wasn’t surprised. A little bitterly, she wondered if it had been Chief-Director Costa-Brown or Legend who told Alexandria.

“Alexandria,” Emily said evenly.

Alexandria nodded once, the barest show of respect. “Director Piggot,” she returned. “I’m here for Auspice. Where can I find her?”

“I don’t know,” Emily said, and it wasn’t even because she was annoyed. “She isn’t on duty yet, and though she assured us she would be finding accomodations soon, we don’t currently have an address on record.”

If Alexandria was upset by that, it didn’t show. She nodded again. “I understand. When is her next shift?”

“Eight AM.” Emily glanced at her clock. “So, in about ten minutes.”

Damn. That meant Alexandria had probably done this on purpose. She knew exactly what she was doing. Emily really didn’t like this woman.

Grudgingly, Emily added, “She should be coming here to the PRT Headquarters for a meeting with Image to discuss her future costume.”

“I will wait, then,” Alexandria said.

Emily gritted her teeth. “Of course,” she said. “What do you want her for?”

A stupid question; it was obvious why Alexandria might want a cape like Auspice. But Emily wanted a proper answer, at least, if one of her Protectorate members was about to be snatched away by the damn Triumvirate.

“We have an interest in her power, and intend to test it further,” Alexandria said. “As I’m sure you are aware, the potential of her power is immense.”

Obviously. Emily restrained herself.

“Of course,” she said again.

Ten minutes couldn’t come soon enough.

Fortunately, Alexandria seemed to have had the same thought. “Excuse me, Director,” she said. “If Auspice will be meeting with the PR department here, I believe it would be best for me to wait there.”

“Certainly,” Emily said, gesturing towards the door.

Alexandria nodded at her once more, then turned, cape flaring with the movement, and strode out.

_January 16, 2011_

_Alexandria_

Auspice was punctual, at least, showing up to her eight AM appointment with Image at 7:59AM. Alexandria was there waiting for her. She’d already explained to the PR people that Auspice would be unavailable, and none of them had argued. The nice thing about being Alexandria. Almost nobody ever argued.

Standing in the hallway, arms crossed, Alexandria saw Auspice first. Auspice looked deceptively normal, in jeans, a T-shirt, and a domino mask. Alexandria knew better than to judge based on that; nobody would have ever believed that David was Eidolon if they saw him out of costume, and Alexandria herself had thousands of people convinced that Rebecca Costa-Brown was a normal human. Auspice would likely be given a suitably impressive costume, once she actually got to meet with Image.

When Auspice noticed Alexandria in return, she hesitated, stopping in her tracks, and then continued towards her.

“Auspice, right?” Alexandria said once Auspice was close enough, and offered her hand for a handshake.

“Yes. You’re Alexandria,” Auspice said, eyeing Alexandria’s hand. “Are you sure about that?”

Alexandria was sure. They -- Cauldron -- had talked about this. Contessa couldn’t Path this girl, so they couldn’t tell for sure how she’d act, but they had decided that the risk of allowing her to copy their powers was worth it for what she might be able to do. And having Alexandria’s power, while not perfect, would go a long way to keeping her safe so that she _could_ do it.

“Of course,” Alexandria said.

Auspice looked up at her thoughtfully, then smiled. The resemblance to a smile Alexandria had seen from Contessa too many times to count (a smile that said _I know more than you do_) was so strong that Alexandria almost felt a shiver down her spine. Auspice reached out and shook Alexandria’s hand. There was no visible change. Auspice tilted her head to one side briefly, obviously assessing the new power, then looked back to Alexandria.

“Nice to meet you. So. I’m guessing you’re not just here to say hello,” Auspice said.

Alexandria inclined her head. “You’re right. I’d like you to come with me. There are some people who want to meet you.”

“Hmm, sounds ominous,” Auspice said cheerfully. “I’m going to miss my appointment with Image, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” Alexandria said. “It’s all right. They’ve already agreed to reschedule.”

Auspice laughed. “Okay, cool.” She gestured broadly. “Lead on, Miss Alexandria.”

This was not how Alexandria had expected this to go. But Auspice was going along with it very easily; best not look a gift horse in the mouth. Not yet, anyway.

Alexandria led the way.

To be specific, she led Auspice out of the PRT building and into a nearby, isolated alleyway.

“Does this count as a secondary location?” Auspice muttered.

It was obvious that she was talking to herself. And, anyway, Alexandria wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, so she just left it alone. She checked to make sure there was nobody around. There wasn’t.

“Door me.”

Alexandria glanced at Auspice as the portal formed. Auspice looked curious, maybe even impressed, but not particularly surprised. Alexandria got the eerie Contessa shiver again, which was odd, when Auspice shouldn’t have any Thinker abilities yet aside from Alexandria’s own, and certainly not Path to Victory.

“Go through, please,” Alexandria said, indicating the Door.

Auspice looked at the portal for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay.”

She stepped into the portal and disappeared. After a moment, Alexandria followed her through into Cauldron’s base -- not one of the interview rooms, but their main conference room. As the name implied, there was a large conference table in the middle of the room, with eight chairs around it.

The Doctor and Contessa were already there. The Doctor was sitting, while Contessa stood.

Auspice looked between them and blinked. “Oh. Uh, hi,” she said.

“Hello, Auspice,” the Doctor said. “I’m sure you’re wondering what is happening.”

“Yeah, that’s a good way to phrase it,” Auspice said.

“You can call me Doctor. This is Contessa,” she gestured towards her. “First off, everything we are about to tell you is top secret. You must not speak about it to anyone else. If you are unwilling to agree to those terms, then you can leave now.”

Auspice only thought about it for a moment. “Okay. I won’t tell anyone about it, then.”

The Doctor flicked her eyes to Alexandria, asking for confirmation, and she nodded slightly. As far as she could tell, Auspice was telling the truth.

“We are part of an organization named Cauldron,” the Doctor told Auspice.

It seemed she didn’t want to go through all of the steps to ensure secrecy that they usually did with people who bought vials.

“We have been operating in secrecy, working to save the world from a grave threat,” the Doctor continued.

Auspice was quiet for a moment, looking thoughtful. She glanced around the room again. “A grave threat?” she repeated.

“Yes.” The Doctor was quiet for a moment. “What do you know about Scion?”

“Scion,” Auspice said, tone unreadable. She shook her head. “Okay, this feels like a random pop quiz. So, he’s widely considered the first and most powerful superhero, right?” She looked around again. “Are you telling me that he’s secretly evil? You’re trying to save the world from _him_?”

Alexandria analyzed her. It was surprisingly difficult to tell what Auspice was thinking -- had that started when she copied Alexandria’s power, or was it true before that?

It didn’t really matter, Alexandria supposed. In any case, Auspice seemed calm, a little confused, maybe somewhat surprised. Not shocked, horrified, or skeptical. None of the responses Alexandria might have expected from somebody being told that Scion was evil.

“Yes. I am telling you that,” the Doctor said. “Our enemy is Scion, and we have spent thirty years searching for a way to kill him. But it is difficult for a number of reasons: he is near all-powerful, for one. And we must ensure that he does not know of our existence, or he would surely destroy us.”

The Doctor was silent for a moment, judging Auspice’s reaction -- or, more accurately, her lack of a reaction -- and allowing her to respond.

“Okay. I think I understand,” Auspice said, eerily calm for the situation.

If Alexandria had to guess, she would say that Auspice was a precog, living out a conversation she’d already seen, going through the motions without learning anything new. Like before, it reminded her of Contessa. But that was impossible. There were no precog powers that could manage something like that aside from Path to Victory, and blind spot though she may be, there was no way Auspice could have it yet. One of Auspice’s powers -- maybe even her copy of Alexandria’s power -- must have been deceiving her.

“I do wonder, what exactly makes you think that he’s, you know, evil? A danger to the entire world, or whatever?”

That was the main question, wasn’t it. This was, Alexandria thought, the calmest she’d ever seen anyone while asking it.

“It is difficult to explain,” the Doctor said. She glanced at Contessa.

“The short version is that he is an alien. He and his now-deceased partner came here to Earth planning to eventually destroy all of humanity,” Contessa said. “I have a powerful precognition power, and I saw a vision of their plan when I Triggered.”

“We realize that may be difficult to believe,” the Doctor said.

“Well, yeah. I mean. Aliens. That’s a little far out there,” Auspice said

The Doctor nodded. “As proof, I would like to show you something.” She stood. “Door to the Chamber, please.”

Alexandria winced a little. Being exposed to the Counterpart’s corpse without warning was _unpleasant_, to say the least.

A portal opened, and Contessa passed through first. The Doctor gestured Auspice over.

“Auspice, if you will.”

For possibly the first time, Auspice looked a little wary. “Sure,” she said nonetheless, and followed after Contessa.


	3. Cauldron is Reasonable?

_January 16, 2011_

_Contessa_

Auspice stepped into the Counterpart’s chamber shortly after Contessa, took one look at the mountainous monstrosity, and went paper-white. Her eyes flicked around, looking at the various parts of the Counterpart with much the same curiosity that causes people to stop and stare at car accidents; a horrified sort of fascination. 

“...That’s disgusting,” Auspice said eventually. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, she was reacting differently than Contessa had seen from anyone else who had been shown the Counterpart’s remains. For instance, no threat of vomiting. 

“It is,” Contessa agreed. She waited. Idly, she wished that she could Path this girl. That would make things so much easier. As it was, she had to make do. 

Auspice looked away from the Counterpart, finally, to look at Contessa with an unreadable expression. Contessa had never been very good at reading people without Path to Victory. 

“You said that Scion had a deceased partner,” Auspice said. “This is that partner, then?” 

Good. The girl was pretty clever. Contessa nodded. “Yes. We refer to it as the Counterpart.” 

“Okay.” She blew out a breath of air, almost a sigh, but not quite. “Well, it definitely looks _alien_. Where did it come from? Like, why do you have it here?” 

“It crash landed on Earth near my home. That is also when I got my power,” Contessa said, then, before Auspice could speak again, added, “Is this proof enough?” 

Auspice looked back to the Counterpart’s body. “...Yeah,” she decided after a moment. “I’d say that’s pretty convincing proof of aliens. I mean, I’m not sure how this thing connects to Scion, but it’s hard not to believe you now.” 

Contessa nodded. The Counterpart’s body was enough to convince most people of at least their theory, and from her lackluster recount of Scion’s backstory, Auspice had no particular concern for him or his reputation. Her reaction fit. 

“Good. Let us return, then,” Contessa said. 

“Okay. I don’t really want to stand here and stare at this thing any -- way…” Auspice trailed off as one of Doormaker’s portals opened with no prompting. 

Hm. He usually waited for a request. But then, the circumstances made it rather obvious. Contessa indicated for Auspice to precede her through the portal. 

Auspice went, muttering as she did, “That’s very Big Brother.” 

For the sake of keeping the conversation on track, Contessa opted to ignore the comment. 

“Convinced?” Doctor Mother asked once Auspice and Contessa were back in their conference room. 

“Oh, yeah, pretty convinced,” Auspice said slowly. “I mean. Giant eldritch space mountain in the basement, kind of difficult to argue against. Scion is really a giant evil space mountain?” 

Giant evil space mountain. Contessa considered the phrase. It was not one she herself ever would have applied to either the Enemy or the Counterpart. 

“...Yes. Well, that’s one way to describe what he is,” Doctor Mother said after a moment. “Also, for future reference, we prefer to say _his_ name as little as possible, referring to him instead as the ‘Enemy’.” 

“Right, right, because of the whole ‘killing you if he finds out about your existence’ thing. I get it. The Enemy. I can do that,” Auspice said. She crossed her arms. “All right, so, aliens and the impending doom of the planet. I assume you guys have some kind of plan to deal with this?” 

“Something like that,” Doctor Mother said. 

“My power is Path to Victory,” Contessa said. “It gives me the exact actions I would need in order to complete any goal.” 

Auspice raised her eyebrows. “Sounds powerful.” 

“It is,” Contessa said honestly, unashamed. “One of the most powerful powers in the world. Unfortunately, it has a blind spot.” 

“The Enemy,” Auspice guessed. 

Contessa nodded. “Yes. I can’t Path the Enemy, and therefore I can’t see how to defeat him. It is our hope that if you copy my power, you can change that in _your_ version.” 

“I can’t improve powers,” Auspice pointed out. 

“You might not have to. Shortly before its death, the Counterpart added that restriction to my power. Hopefully, you would only have to remove the restriction, not actually add any new capability to the power.” 

“Okay. Yeah, that makes sense,” Auspice said thoughtfully. “Well, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to, but it can’t hurt to try.” She tilted her head to the side. “Are you really going to let me copy your power so easily?” 

Doctor Mother sighed, her severe expression softening enough for Contessa to read the exhaustion writ in the lines of her aging face. She had been working as unceasingly and as long for their goal as Contessa -- longer than any of the others -- and Doctor Mother had not been so young when they began. 

“We have been working to find a way to defeat the Enemy for thirty years. So, for the possibility of a real chance, yes,” Doctor Mother said. 

To show her agreement, Contessa simply held her hand out, palm straight down rather than in a handshake pose. 

“All right,” Auspice said, and reached out to tap the back of Contessa’s hand. Her eyes went distant, obviously no longer looking at anything. She hummed a little, thoughtfully. 

Contessa watched her carefully, heart in her throat despite herself. Hope was foreign to her, at this point, but -- she wanted it to work. 

After a moment, Auspice huffed. “Oh, thanks, that’s very helpful,” she muttered to herself with an eye roll. She looked around, between Contessa, Doctor Mother, and Alexandria, and smiled. “I think I got it to work.” 

Alexandria let out such a heavy breath that she’d probably been holding her breath. Doctor Mother braced herself on the back of one of the chairs. Contessa felt the tension in her muscles ease a bit. 

“We’ll have to test it,” Doctor Mother said briskly. “To make sure it’s accurate.” 

And to make sure that Auspice was telling the truth, Contessa noted silently. There were few futures where saying that aloud went well. 

“Yeah, of course. Hmm, do you guys get internet down here?” Auspice said, looking doubtful. 

Well, with Doormaker’s help...“We do,” Contessa said. “You hope to use Path to Victory to predict the Enemy’s actions, then use the internet to verify it?” 

“Yeah, exactly.” Auspice looked pleased. “I mean, I figured that would be the fastest way to prove I can Path him. Accurately.” 

“Yes, you’re right,” Doctor Mother said. “Door to my office.” 

Doctor Mother led the way, and Contessa ushered Auspice through before following herself. Once Alexandria had entered last, the Door closed. Doctor Mother took a seat at her desk. Contessa watched over her shoulder as she opened a webpage and navigated to a site devoted to tracking Scion’s actions. 

“Auspice?” Doctor Mother said leadingly. 

“Yup. Okay, let’s try… Path to meeting Scion as soon as possible,” Auspice said. Her eyes went distant again briefly as she followed the Path. Contessa wondered if it was so obvious when _she_ was using Path to Victory. “He should be in… uh, Salzburg, Austria? In about thirty-seven seconds. It’ll take another minute on top of that before anything is posted about him, though.” 

Doctor Mother nodded and wrote it down. “All right. And then?” 

“Then, he’ll go to -- what the heck? Why?” Auspice sounded confused. “Whatever, apparently he’ll go to Kano, Nigeria, approximately a minute from now. That delays him for twenty-nine seconds, before he goes to Arusha, Tanzania. After that is… across the frigging world, apparently, to Tarija, Bolivia. And then Xalapao, Mexico. Then Port-au-Prince, Haiti. But the thing in Kano won’t end up online, and the one in Tarija is so delayed that it won’t be online for nine minutes, two longer than it will take somebody to post about the Port-au-Prince thing.” She took a breath. “Think six consecutive things is enough, or should I keep going?” 

“Considering that nobody else can predict him even one action in the future, that should be plenty,” Contessa said. 

Contessa might have thought she’d feel angry, or upset in some way, about another person so easily Pathing Scion, when she herself had been so agonizingly unable for so long. She wasn’t, though. As the next post on the Scion tracking site popped up declaring a sighting in Salzburg and Doctor Mother confirmed it, Contessa didn’t feel anything but an overwhelming relief and happiness. Shortly after, another new post announced a sighting in Arusha, and Contessa felt another emotion. 

She thought it might be hope. 

After ten minutes, they had verified every one of the Scion sightings Auspice had predicted, except, as she’d also predicted, the one in Kano, Nigeria. Doctor Mother sat there silently for a moment. Alexandria seemed to be in shock. Auspice waited patiently, with a hint of smugness. 

Contessa spoke first. “One more thing,” she said. 

Auspice didn’t look surprised at all. “Okay,” she said easily, then gave Contessa an expectant look. 

Oh. Of course. She’d run a Path to convincing them that she could Path Scion. Obviously; Contessa would have done the same. For a moment, she doubted Auspice’s ability again. But no, Auspice had done exactly what she needed to in order to truly prove herself. Contessa could also Path convincing the others that she could Path Scion, but her version mostly involved a lot of fast talking, posturing, and fancy words. 

In any case, that was why Contessa wanted one more test, even if Auspice had already seen what Contessa wanted her to do. Damn it. Was this what it was like dealing with Contessa? It didn’t matter, however; whether or not Auspice knew ahead of time the answer Contessa wanted, she would still need to be able to Path Eidolon in order to get it. 

“Run a Path to restoring Eidolon to full power,” Contessa said. 

“Sure.” Auspice smiled. “It’s actually pretty simple.” 

Alexandria scoffed quietly. Contessa could understand the urge; years of all of them worrying about Eidolon losing power, _years_ of trying to regain, replenish, _fix_ his power -- and it was _simple_? So, yes, Contessa understood. However, she too had experienced first-hand the sheer breadth of Path to Victory’s power. She had once been given the sole method of killing an alien of unimaginable power, deceptively simple and yet so impossibly precise that it could not have been possible without Path to Victory. 

Under the command of Path to Victory, _everything_ was simple. 

It didn’t mean anything. 

“Basically,” Auspice continued, and Contessa could tell immediately that she was paraphrasing; this was not what she had gotten from Path to Victory, “he’s running out of power, right? Or more like, the _energy_ that feeds powers. To get back to full power, he needs to take the energy from another power. Another… agent? Either other parahumans or the Counterpart’s body would work. The Path actually says to tell him, and I quote, ‘You just need to look. Whatever powers your agent gives you, just keep switching them out until it lets you see.’ Apparently weird and cryptic is the way to go.” Auspice rolled her eyes. “Oh, and also, one of _you_ has to tell him. He won’t listen to me. Not without a lot more effort, anyway.” 

Well, Contessa was convinced. She could tell that Alexandria was itching to go get Eidolon immediately. First things first, though. 

“Good. And the Enemy?” 

“Practically even simpler,” Auspice answered. “Well, for me, anyway. I just need to collect a few more powers, and then I can kill him directly with hardly any trouble.” 

“What powers?” Doctor Mother asked immediately. 

“Doormaker’s and Clairvoyant’s, some Ward in New York named Flechette, and pretty much any Blaster power, but obviously Legend’s is the best. Plus he’s right there in New York too.” 

“You want to copy Clairvoyant’s power? Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Doctor Mother said, frowning. 

“Oh, yeah, it’ll be fine. Hmm, it sounds kind of terrible to say -- I kinda want to apologize -- but I won’t have any ill effects from it,” Auspice said. She shrugged a little. 

“After you copy those four powers, what then? How do you kill the Enemy?” Contessa said. 

“Like I said, it’s simple. Path to killing Scion: hit him with Flechette’s power, then laser until dead.” 

“That is _not_ what the Path says,” Contessa protested automatically, feeling oddly like her power had been slighted. 

Auspice snickered. “Well, no, I’m just summarizing. It’s more fun like this. To be more specific, I plan to alter Flechette’s power so I can use it together with a Blaster power, but that’s not strictly necessary. Then, I don’t want to be seen murdering the world’s first superhero, so I wait until there are no people around -- that’s not hard, he crosses the ocean a lot -- and I hit him with, you know, a ton of lasers until he’s dead.” Auspice spread her hands, as though to say _see?_ “If all goes right -- and I mean, Path to Victory, so it will -- then he won’t even have a chance to fight back.” 

Contessa took a moment to process that. She exchanged a look with Doctor Mother, and then with Alexandria. 

“You’re saying that you could do it right now,” Doctor Mother said slowly. “You could kill him.” 

“As soon as I have the powers, yeah. Which I guess is to say, as soon as you guys want me to do it and let me get the powers.” 

“As soon as possible,” Alexandria said, her gaze intent. “After so long -- with the Enemy dead, then…” 

She trailed off. 

Then they could handle all of the threats they’d previously allowed to exist in the expectation that they might be useful against Scion, Contessa finished. 

“Yes, that is correct. We should not put it off, especially not if it would be, as you say, that simple,” Doctor Mother said. 

She glanced at Contessa, who dipped her head slightly. Contessa agreed, too. As Alexandria had said, after so long, she wasn’t sure she could bear to put it off any longer. 

“Alexandria, you go with Auspice to collect the powers she needs. Contessa, go retrieve Eidolon, tell him what is happening, and verify that Auspice’s Path is accurate.” 

Alexandria and Contessa nodded. 

“Door to Doormaker and Clairvoyant,” Alexandria said. 

Once she and Auspice had passed through and the portal disappeared, Contessa said, “Door to Eidolon’s office in the Houston Protectorate base.” 

Even as she stepped through, Contessa began Pathing a man who was not Eidolon, but who acted much like what she knew of him, plotting out the best way to explain the whirlwind of the past twenty minutes. 


	4. Path to Completion

_January 16, 2011_

_Flechette_

The alarm on the Wards’ base went off, warning that somebody without the clearance to know the Wards’ identities was about to enter. Flechette already had her mask on, as did most of the others, but she noticed Jouster putting his on hurriedly.

Finally, the alarm stopped and the door opened. Three people walked through: Legend, Alexandria, and some girl Flechette had never seen before. She was wearing a basic domino mask and civilian clothes, bringing up the question of whether she was even a cape. Maybe just one without a costume…? She was kind of pretty, anyway, if plain.

Legend immediately zeroed in on Flechette and led the two women over to her, moving purposefully. “Flechette.”

Flechette stood to greet them, a little nervous. Sure, she worked in New York with Legend, and she’d met Alexandria before, but that was a far cry from this. She’d never been searched out before.

“This is Flechette?” the mystery girl asked once the three were standing in front of Flechette.

“Yes. Flechette, this is Auspice,” Legend said. “She’s a new hero with the Brockton Bay Protectorate.”

“Uh, okay.” Flechette wasn’t sure why that warranted a special meeting with Flechette in particular.

“Hi! Nice to meet you, Flechette,” Auspice said cheerfully, holding out her hand.

Flechette shook her hand instinctively. “Yeah. Nice to meet you too,” _I guess_, she said.

Auspice sidled backwards, glancing at Alexandria and Legend. “Well, sorry to greet and run, but I’m supposed to be in Brockton Bay right now.” She winked at Flechette. “Don’t tell the Imaging Department where I went, okay?”

It startled Flechette into a laugh. “I’ll keep your secret,” she promised.

“Excuse us,” Legend said, nodding politely to Flechette.

And just like that, as abruptly as they had appeared, they left.

Flechette stared after them for a moment, hopelessly confused.

“What the hell,” Jouster said eloquently.

“I… I don’t even know,” Flechette said.

What just happened?

_January 16, 2011_

_Eidolon_

Eidolon wasn’t sure how to feel. Contessa had waltzed into his office and overturned his life. Typical of her, really.

He had expected for a long time, most of his life, to fight Scion, to save the world. As time went on and he weakened, he became less and less hopeful of his chances of winning, but the point remained that it was one steady part of his life.

And now, apparently, somebody else was going to kill Scion. Some girl who’d shown up literally two days ago, but apparently possessed the ability to copy others’ powers and had been able to unblock Path to Victory and use it on Scion. A large part of Eidolon felt that this was going to go horribly, _horribly_ wrong. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted it to or not.

To add to Eidolon’s conflicted feelings, Contessa had shown up and told him exactly what he needed in order to get his full power back, apparently passed on from the girl. They had gone to the Counterpart’s body, and it had _worked_.

Eidolon was as strong as he had ever been. He was doing things he hadn’t been able to do in years. It felt amazing. _He_ felt amazing. He felt powerful.

But what was the point, if somebody else had the method to kill Scion, no input from Eidolon required? What was the point of his power? What was the point of _him_?

So he wasn’t sure if he wanted the girl -- ‘Auspice’ -- to successfully kill Scion. Of course he wanted Scion dead; like the rest of them, it had been his main goal for more than twenty years. And if Scion could truly be killed, it would be a massive relief. They would no longer have the end of the world hanging over their heads. They would be free to do so much more, without Scion as a concern.

The selfish side of Eidolon, however, almost wanted something to go wrong. He wanted to be useful. If something went wrong, then he would be. Then there would be a point to him having lived all these years.

According to Contessa, Alexandria and Auspice had gone to gather the powers Auspice said she would need in order to kill Scion and explain the circumstances to Legend. In the end, they took longer to do that than Eidolon and Contessa had taken, but not by much. Fortunately for Eidolon, they portaled back into Cauldron’s base to meet up before he had much time for introspection.

Alexandria entered first, followed by the girl who must have been Auspice. Eidolon examined her. She looked ordinary. If not for the domino mask -- which looked almost like an afterthought -- he would have thought she was any normal college student. She didn’t even have a costume.

A sign of what a short time she’d been a hero, he supposed.

Auspice smiled when she saw him. “Eidolon! Did it work?” she asked immediately.

Eidolon inclined his head. “It did,” he said, then, after a moment of thought, added, “Thank you.”

“No need to thank me,” she said, shaking her head. She looked around at the four of them gathered there. “So, we ready?”

“Legend isn’t coming?” Eidolon said.

“He decided to stay behind,” Alexandria answered.

Eidolon nodded. “Then, I believe it’s up to you, Auspice,” he said. “Are you ready?”

“Of course. I have all the powers I need; I’m all set. Also, if we go now, we can catch Scion in the middle of the Atlantic,” Auspice said, very casually, as though it was no big deal.

It wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. Contessa often spoke in much the same way, almost taking Path to Victory’s power for granted. Contessa, however, took most things more seriously than this girl seemed to.

“Let’s go, then,” Alexandria said impatiently.

“Sure thing. Contessa, Doctor, either of you coming?”

A portal opened as Auspice spoke. One of Doormaker’s, Eidolon recognized, although in this case, he supposed it was made by Auspice using Doormaker’s power.

The Doctor shook her head. “No. We will wait here.”

“All right.”

Auspice lifted a couple of inches off the floor, then flew through her portal. Eidolon followed suit, trailed shortly by Alexandria. As Auspice had implied, they were now several hundred feet above the ocean, with no land in sight in any direction.

Auspice flew a short distance from where she had created her portal, turned in a full 360, then, finally, deliberately faced in a specific direction.

“He’ll be coming from that direction,” Auspice said, pointing. “Actually, to be specific, he’ll be traveling on a direct collision course with me, now. We have about a minute before he shows, though. I wanted to make sure we’d be here in time, you know?”

The question sounded rhetorical, so Eidolon opted to ignore it. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” he said.

It came out sounding a bit more aggressive than he’d intended. Eidolon didn’t actually want an argument. This was why people considered him the least friendly member of the Triumvirate. Fortunately, Auspice didn’t seem offended.

“I’m sure,” she said lightly, and looked at him with eyes that seemed to pierce through his soul. “I know it must be hard to believe. It’s just… well, it takes a very specific combination of powers to do any damage to him, but with those powers, it’s not so difficult.” She shrugged. “Also, he’s not expecting to be attacked, so that helps too. If it was in the middle of a fair fight, this would be much more difficult.” She turned back towards the direction she’d indicated before, a smirk growing on her face. “Fortunately, I don’t plan to fight fair. Twenty seconds.”

Eidolon tensed. His powers cycled restlessly, and he clamped down on them, trying to keep the current ones, by habit. Then he remembered his newly-returned strength and allowed two of them to switch out, but kept the one he was using for flight. He noticed Alexandria’s hands tightening into fists with her own tension, the only sign of it.

Auspice raised one hand, and glowing blue-white light began building around her hand, then around the rest of her body. It was a little jarring to see it coming from her, when he so strongly associated the appearance with Legend. Of course it did. She literally had Legend’s power.

A beam of blue-white light shot off from Auspice, followed shortly by dozens more. Eidolon caught just the barest glimpse of Scion, rocketing towards her at impossible speeds, before he was caught in the first laser, obliterating the top half of his body. In the next second, several portals opened around and over him, revealing on the other side a massive creature so unnatural that Eidolon couldn’t even describe it.

Immediately after the portals opened, so close that it almost seemed to be at the exact same time, Auspice’s additional dozens of lasers shot through, impacting the alien creature -- Scion. Some lasers exploded on contact, but most just cut through, gouging away large portions of the creature’s body.

And then it was done.

The massive body was gone, and the lasers went on to carve long chasms into the ground of the empty planet below before finally slowing and fading. Auspice’s portals closed.

Eidolon stared.

For a long moment, he couldn’t do anything but.

More than twenty years. For more than twenty years, they had worried about the eventual, inevitable fight with Scion. For so long, they had plotted and planned and done frankly terrible things, all in the hopes of finding the correct combination of people to allow them to kill Scion. To kill a god.

And this girl did it so easily. Three days after gaining her power. A matter of minutes after gaining Path to Victory. And she just wiped Scion out of existence _effortlessly_.

It wasn’t quite so easy as it looked, he knew. And there was more to it than simply the flashy, impressive effects of Legend’s lasers. As Auspice had said, she had a very specific combination of powers necessary, including Path to Victory, which had always made things look effortless in Contessa’s hands.

But still. _Still_.

“Hmm. I wonder if I can still make my meeting with Image,” Auspice said thoughtfully.

Eidolon looked at her, struck speechless. Alexandria seemed to be much the same. All of that… and she was just concerned with a _meeting_? It was like killing Scion meant nothing to her.

Like Cauldron’s life work of close to thirty years meant nothing to her.

Eidolon took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Auspice hadn’t been there for all of that, and killing Scion really _was_ just that minor, that fast, for her. Either way, she didn’t deserve his anger.

He almost wished he could be angry; wished he could hate her for rendering him -- and the rest of Cauldron, it seemed -- superfluous. But it wasn’t her fault, not really. And in the end, she had saved the world. She had helped them all immensely, and so willingly and readily that some part of Eidolon still thought it must be a trap.

Eidolon’s feelings were very conflicted.

“...You probably can,” he said belatedly. “They’re usually pretty understanding.”

Auspice turned to smile at him.

At this point, she was quite possibly the strongest person in the world. Maybe not stronger than Eidolon himself, now that he was once more at full power, except for the inclusion of Path to Victory. And she was young, barely an adult. Eidolon could no longer claim the title of most powerful parahuman, but perhaps he could still be useful otherwise.

Eidolon drifted close enough to rest his hand on her shoulder. Auspice looked at the hand with some bemusement.

“Well done,” Eidolon said, somewhat awkwardly.

Auspice’s smile widened -- with amusement, but a little honest delight, too, Eidolon thought.

“Thank you,” she said. “That means a lot coming from you.”

Alexandria flew over to them, her arms crossed. Though more of her face was visible than Eidolon’s, it was still difficult to read her; the visible portion of her face was stony.

“Scion is dead, then?” Alexandria said.

“Oh, yeah. Super dead,” Auspice said.

Alexandria nodded thoughtfully. “How do you feel about destroying the Slaughterhouse Nine?”


	5. The Slaughterhouse None

_January 24, 2011_

_Alexandria_

Their plot to destroy the Slaughterhouse Nine ended up being put off. As much as Alexandria might have wanted to go fight them right then, it didn’t really work out, logistically. Instead, they decided to wait until Auspice’s costume had been finished and she was about to be officially announced as a Protectorate hero.

In the meantime, they planned out their attack -- it took about as long as planning sessions with Contessa, which was not very long at all -- informed the PRT ENE that they would not need to announce Auspice, and waited. Finally, it was almost time. The Slaughterhouse Nine would be in position soon -- all together and far away from any other people. Legend should have already told the PRT what they were planning.

At the prearranged time exactly, one of Auspice’s portals appeared in front of Alexandria -- now easily differentiated from Doormaker’s by a helpful golden edge. Alexandria raised her eyebrows, but didn’t hesitate in going through.

The portal let her out in Legend’s office in New York, where Legend was already waiting. Eidolon and Auspice were just exiting portals of their own next to Alexandria. Alexandria had to do a double take when she saw Auspice, who was now wearing her new costume, plus an unexpected addition. She elected to ignore it.

“It’s almost time?” Alexandria asked.

She knew full well that it was, but it still felt strange to be waiting for battle in the Protectorate base in New York. They hadn’t really used Doormaker’s portals like this; only for official Cauldron travel, for secrecy reasons.

“Yup. In about six minutes, the Slaughterhouse Nine will be on an empty road near-ish the PRT Headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That would be, uh… the PRT 47. I think.” Auspice shrugged.

Alexandria nodded once in acknowledgement.

They fell into a tense, awkward silence.

After a moment, Legend spoke, in much the same tone he used on his Wards. “Your costume looks very nice.”

It did. The costume consisted of a black bodysuit with tasteful patterns embroidered in gold. Over that, she wore a pure white hooded jacket that had gold edging at the sleeves and hood, with loose sleeves that stopped just before her wrists to reveal the tighter sleeves of the bodysuit underneath transitioning into fingerless black gloves.

As Alexandria had expected, the costume made Auspice look much more impressive. The designers had done a good job.

The cloud of inexplicably golden smoke covering the top of her face under her hood, however, was a bit over the top.

Auspice smiled brightly at Legend. “Thank you,” she said, doing a quick twirl. “I’m pretty pleased with how it came out.”

“Please tell me you’re at least wearing a mask under there,” Eidolon said dryly.

Auspice laughed. “I am, I’m wearing a domino mask,” she said, lifting a hand, which disappeared into the smoke as she tapped at, presumably, her mask. “I just thought the smoke looked cool.”

“It does look cool,” Eidolon said, because this was the man who put LEDs in his own costume for effect.

Legend let out a quiet, muffled chuckle. Alexandria didn’t bother to be polite, snorting audibly. Auspice and Eidolon both ignored her, anyway.

Alexandria didn’t quite have room to mock them, however, she acknowledged to herself. Though she hadn’t gone nearly as far over the top as Eidolon (or now Auspice), she had also put considerable thought into the appearance she wanted when in costume; they all had. Appearances were important, especially for capes, and heroes and villains alike put a lot of work into their costumes.

After another moment of silence, Legend spoke again. He always was the worst with silences.

“Does everybody remember the plan?”

Alexandria couldn’t help but give him an incredulous look, a little offended by the implication.

“Because it’s so difficult to remember ‘attack through the portal as soon as it opens in front of you’,” Eidolon said.

Legend smiled ruefully. “Yes, fair enough,” he said. “What about you, Auspice?”

Alexandria could understand being nervous about Auspice’s role in the plan. She was in charge of the majority of it, and the rest of them would be relying on her to do her part correctly. And she was twenty-two and had been a parahuman for less than two weeks. But Legend hadn’t seen her seemingly effortless defeat of Scion. The proof that Path to Victory made her just as ridiculous and impossible as Contessa, except with added superpowers.

“I remember the plan,” Auspice confirmed obligingly. “It’ll be fine. Four minutes to go, by the way.”

Apparently bored, she pulled out a phone.

They lapsed back into a tense silence that only Auspice seemed immune to. Legend was frowning faintly, looking pensive. Eidolon was difficult even for Alexandria to read, too much of his body disguised under his costume.

Alexandria was anxious. No, not anxious; excited, maybe. Something like that. There was some anxiety about going after the Slaughterhouse Nine, but for the most part, Alexandria was… looking forward to it. She would be glad to finally kill Manton and eliminate the Slaughterhouse Nine. After twenty years, they would no longer be able to kill and torture people as they pleased. Alexandria would not be sorry to see them dead.

Several minutes later, Auspice looked up and put her phone away. “Thirty seconds.”

Alexandria readied herself as the seconds ticked down. With three seconds to go, Auspice made a small portal, just big enough for her hand to fit through, before getting rid of it just as quickly. Only because Alexandria had already known the plan did she realize that Auspice had done it to poke Manton and copy his power.

The mental count Alexandria had been keeping hit zero, and two portals appeared: one for her, and one for Auspice. Alexandria launched herself through her portal and slammed directly into the front of a van. As the van crumpled around her and the windshield shattered, Alexandria saw Manton’s startled expression in the few seconds before he died. _Good_.

Extricating herself from the wreckage of the van just in time to see a second portal open, Alexandria went through that one too. In an abrupt shift of perspective that would be dizzying for anyone else, Alexandria found herself going from flying horizontal to the ground to flying downward at an angle. She didn’t let it affect her, simply kept going -- directly into Mannequin, who was midair in an attempted leap to safety. Aware of how difficult Mannequin had made it to kill him, Alexandria reduced him to scrap and pulp before considering him dead.

It didn’t take long.

Then Alexandria was able to look around, easily locating the charred, smoking remains of what had probably once been a bus. It had been broken into so many pieces that it was barely recognizable as a vehicle, making it impossible to tell what damage had been done by Auspice and what had been done by Legend. Eidolon’s contribution, however, was obvious. On one side of the wreckage was a bubble of space, large enough to fit a person and steadily growing, which appeared to disintegrate everything inside its area.

Alexandria wouldn’t have been able to tell what had happened at all, aside from her parts, if she hadn’t known the plan beforehand.

The plan in question being: at the same time as she opened a portal to Manton for Alexandria, Auspice had gone into the bus with the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine because she wanted to collect some of their powers -- and she’d assured them that she could do so without any issues. Once she was done, she used her copy of Legend’s lasers empowered with the ability she’d gotten from Flechette to kill Crawler and Hatchetface. Then she’d left the bus and opened portals for both Eidolon and Legend -- Eidolon to use one of his powers on the section of the bus that held Bonesaw to disintegrate her before she could release any of her plagues, and Legend to destroy the rest of the bus.

With the Siberian, Crawler, Hatchetface, and Bonesaw all dealt with, the only member of the Nine left who was even remotely, temporarily able to survive a barrage from Legend was Mannequin, who fled the bus, only for Alexandria to hit him.

It was a good plan. Worthy of Path to Victory. It certainly went as perfectly as anyone could ask.

Alexandria ignored the ashy taste in her mouth from the knowledge that Auspice could have done it entirely alone if she’d wanted to, instead basking in the knowledge that the Slaughterhouse Nine was gone. She’d finally gotten to kill Manton.

Eidolon and Legend passed through their portals to join Alexandria in the aftermath of the Slaughterhouse’s destruction. Auspice returned from where she’d gone when she’d left the bus -- back to Manton’s van, to destroy the evidence of him having ever been there.

For a moment, they all stared in silence at the bus.

“So, who actually has to report about this? Not it,” Auspice asked finally.

Eidolon and Legend both groaned a little. Whether at the question itself, or Auspice’s childish behavior in asking it, Alexandria wasn’t sure. She, for one, had an answer. Or at least part of one.

“Not me,” she said.

Legend looked at her with surprise. “Not you too, Alexandria,” he said with some amusement.

“_I’ll_ have to do the paperwork either way; I’m not doing it twice,” Alexandria said.

Auspice seemed neither confused nor surprised at the comment. She probably already knew Alexandria’s secret identity -- undoubtedly thanks to Path to Victory, if not Clairvoyant’s power. It was a little annoying. Alexandria knew Auspice’s identity, of course, or rather, she knew the civilian identity the PRT ENE had created for her so that they could hire her, but it wasn’t the same. As the Chief-Director of the PRT, she had access to every hero’s identity. Auspice’s cheating meant that she was now one of three Protectorate or PRT members who knew Alexandria’s identity.

It didn’t really matter. If nothing else, Auspice seemed to be good at keeping secrets. Cauldron had already shared secrets far more important than Alexandria’s identity with her.

And she seemed to have enough secrets of her own, too.

_January 24, 2011_

_Velocity_

Velocity went to the PRT Headquarters five minutes before he was supposed to go on patrol. Auspice was already there, getting set up with a Protectorate headset to communicate with each other and the Console. Though she was facing away from him, Auspice must have noticed him immediately, as she looked over her shoulder at him. The PRT agent helping her with the headset grumbled at her.

“Hey, Velocity,” she said.

“Hey. Almost ready?”

“Yeah, almost finished.”

“We are finished,” the PRT agent corrected. “It should work now. Don’t bother the Console unnecessarily, but let me know if it doesn’t work during your patrol.”

Auspice looked amused. “Okay. Thank you.”

The agent nodded once and left, in a hurry to do whatever it was that people who worked for the PRT did all day. Auspice put her hood back up and a cloud of smoke the same color as the edging of her costume formed underneath the edge of the hood, hiding the top of her face.

Velocity raised his eyebrows. Tinkertech? A power she’d collected? Tinkertech _made_ with one of the powers she’d collected? It was hard to imagine Armsmaster ever making a purely cosmetic device, but Velocity supposed that didn’t mean his power couldn’t do it.

“Neat effect,” he said. He thought about it. “Can you see through it?”

“Thank you, and yes, I can see through it,” Auspice said around a laugh. “It’s still a little early, should we get started, senior member?”

“Yeah, let’s just go,” Velocity said.

Normally, Protectorate capes patrolled alone, unlike the Wards. They could generally handle themselves in a fight until reinforcements arrived. However, there was a bit of a training period for new Protectorate capes, where they would be sent out with another hero for a week or two to get a handle on procedure and the lay of the land before being let out alone.

They usually hated it. The only Protectorate cape Velocity had seen join since he’d joined that hadn’t been at least silently annoyed was Assault, and though he’d been on full probationary status for a lot longer than the usual week, he’d been surprisingly good-humored about it, like most things.

For now, Auspice seemed more amused than anything, but Velocity wondered how long that would stay true.

“So the route they have me on right now is through Downtown, up onto the Boardwalk, then through the rest of the docks into the trainyard, and back again,” Velocity explained as he led the way out of the building.

“Sounds like a long route,” Auspice said.

Velocity nodded. “It is. And through a lot of empty territory, too, once we get into the docks and the trainyard. I use my power most of the way to speed things up, but as Protectorate heroes we’re supposed to have visible appearances, so on a couple busy streets in Downtown and on the Boardwalk, I slow it down and walk through at normal speed.”

“All right,” Auspice said, sounding ominously as though she was committing his words to heart.

Velocity ignored that and continued.

“Patrolling heroes are supposed to call it in if they encounter trouble, but in case they can’t, Console tracks us. Also, for when Console needs to direct backup to somebody, they know where everyone is,” he said. “Since we’re obviously not wearing tracking devices, that means that there are a number of prearranged check-in points, where we’re supposed to contact Console and tell them we’re moving on to the next segment of the route. And on that note, I need to check in that we’re starting.”

Auspice nodded.

Velocity activated his mic. “Velocity and Auspice beginning patrol at Lord Street and 27th,” he said, and deactivated his mic.

The response came almost immediately. “_Console here. Roger that, Velocity and Auspice. We’ve got you on the board._”

“Did you get Console’s response?” Velocity asked.

“Yeah, I heard it.”

“Good. That’s the basic format for the entire way. It changes up a little, but not by much,” Velocity said. “I’ll do the next check-in, then you can do the one after that to get used to it and make sure your headset’s hooked up properly.”

“Okay, cool.”

Lord Street was pretty busy, but the patrol route didn’t have them stay on it for long. Soon, they were turning onto a much emptier street.

“Are you ready?” Velocity asked.

Auspice nodded. “Yup. I’m ready.”

Velocity activated his power, and the world slowed to a trickle around him. Auspice must have activated her copy of his power immediately after he did, as she only slowed down for a few seconds to his new perception. Then, Velocity started forward at a brisk walk. He could have run; it would make his patrols go much faster. But, apparently unlike Assault and Battery, Velocity could get tired even while using his power. Physical exhaustion still affected him, but he didn’t get any mental exhaustion from the extra time he experienced while sped up.

“Seems kinda slow,” Auspice commented after some time.

Velocity jumped and looked at her, surprised.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing, I just -- I’ve never tried to talk like this,” he said. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

He supposed it wasn’t that surprising that he could talk, given that his power let him breathe when he shouldn’t be able to, but he’d also never had any reason to talk while using his power before.

Velocity shook his head. “Anyway, what were you saying?”

“You could go faster, right? Why don’t you?” she asked.

“There’s no real point,” Velocity said, shrugging. “And, if I go too fast, it makes it hard to hear if somebody says something over the coms.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” Auspice nodded in understanding.

Several streets later, Velocity paused. “All right, this is the first checkpoint.”

He dropped back to normal speed, followed shortly by Auspice.

“This is Velocity and Auspice, we’re at the corner of Elm Street and 7th, moving on,” Velocity told Console.

“_Roger that, Velocity and Auspice. Marking down your route,_” Console said.

“Did you get that?” Velocity said, just to check.

Auspice laughed. “Yes, I got it,” she said. “I am now ready to do it myself. When we get to the next one.”

“Good.”

They continued on, and eventually made their way onto the Boardwalk. The Boardwalk was not always the busiest part of the city, but it always had the most foot traffic. A couple of people paused and whispered as Velocity and Auspice passed; the vast majority, however, ignored their presence. Most of the people in cities with a Protectorate base became inured to the presence of heroes.

Even so, it wasn’t long before a woman approached them, looking nervous. Auspice glanced at Velocity questioningly, and he nodded slightly.

“Excuse me,” the woman said shyly.

“Hello,” Velocity said with his perfected PR smile, stopping to talk to her.

The woman smiled back. “I’m sorry to bother you, but could I get an autograph? And maybe a picture?” she squeaked out.

“Of course,” Velocity said.

The woman brightened and held out a pad of paper and a pen. While Velocity was writing, she turned to Auspice, who had been watching curiously.

“Are you new here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“Yeah, I just joined the Protectorate here in Brockton Bay,” Auspice said. “I’m Auspice.”

Once Velocity was done, the woman got an autograph from Auspice as well, and then a picture with each of them. Finally, thanking them effusively, she left, and they kept going.

“As long as there’s nothing going on, we usually stop to talk with civilians,” Velocity said in an undertone.

He was prepared to explain, but Auspice was already nodding in understanding.

“Ah. For PR reasons,” she said.

“Image already gave you the whole spiel, huh?” Velocity said, laughing a little.

Auspice sighed. “Yeah.”

In the end, their patrol turned out to be exceedingly uneventful, and they returned to Headquarters without any incidents. Velocity wasn’t surprised; patrols were boring more often than not. Villains couldn’t be getting up to crime _all_ the time.

It would probably just be a boring day, he supposed.


	6. Wait, What?

_January 24, 2011_

_Dean Stansfield / Gallant_

A new hero was officially joining the Protectorate today. Even the Wards had been told, though they hadn’t gotten to meet the hero yet. They were expecting to get to meet them that afternoon, once they got out of school and could go to their ‘after school activity’.

Dean was excited; they didn’t get new heroes that often. Plus, the adults had all been weirdly cagey about this new cape -- they hadn’t even been willing to say what their name or power was. So Dean was looking forward to getting to meet them, and an entire day of school seemed almost more unbearable than usual.

The others felt much the same, he knew, if not even moreso.

They stayed away from each other in school, the four of them that were all in Arcadia -- Shadow Stalker was in Winslow and Vista was in middle school, so they weren’t an issue -- but Dean still checked up on the others, as much as he could while still being subtle about it. When it came to his power, he hardly even had to try to pick out Dennis and Chris, especially today. They were both practically overflowing with excitement and impatience, though when Dean saw them in person, they were hiding it surprisingly well.

It was mid-morning when Dean first noticed something odd. People’s emotions started fluctuating oddly -- shock, confusion, sometimes a joy that felt almost vicious. One or two wasn’t that weird, but when it got to eight or nine people, that was weird.

And the number only went up.

What could possibly be happening in school that everybody was reacting to, Dean wondered. Or rather, how many of them were really on the internet during school?

Dennis had been affected too, he saw. They shared some classes, and Dennis looked like he had something he desperately wanted to tell Dean, though he didn’t give into temptation. It wasn’t that surprising for Dennis to be on the internet during school, of course.

Bravely resisting temptation, Dean did not try to figure out what the big deal was, and therefore didn’t find out until lunch.

Victoria had also been caught by whatever bug had been going around, it seemed, because as soon as he approached her table in the cafeteria, she tackled him -- gently, for her, which meant he staggered, but stayed on his feet and kept hold of his tray.

“Hi, Vicky,” he said, but she was already talking over him.

“Dean! Why didn’t you --” she cut herself off. Ah, the sound of Victoria almost forgetting that his identity was secret. “Did you hear?” she said instead, but didn’t let him answer, assuming correctly that he had not heard. “The Brockton Bay Protectorate just got a new hero.”

Oh. So he _had_ heard, though that didn’t explain why Dennis had been any more excited than that morning--

“And apparently, this morning she helped the Triumvirate take down the _Slaughterhouse Nine_!” Victoria finished.

Wait.

What?

“What?” he said out loud.

“I know, right,” Victoria said, dragging him over to the table and ushering him into a seat. “It’s all over PHO. The press release from the PRT announced the total annihilation of the Slaughterhouse Nine and the new hero at the same time. Apparently her name is Auspice, and they didn’t say what her power is, but they said she was ‘instrumental’ in the defeat of the Nine, so she must be pretty powerful, right? Also, look at this!”

Victoria whipped out her phone and shoved it in Dean’s face. He leaned back slightly so that he could actually see the screen. It was already on a picture of the Triumvirate -- no, the Triumvirate and a fourth person, a woman who looked short in comparison to the Triumvirate, who were all very tall.

“Look at her outfit! Isn’t it so pretty?” She pulled her phone back to stare at the picture and sighed at it. “I’m surprised to see a Protectorate hero wearing something like that. I mean, it looks like something I’d design for myself.”

She finally fell silent, and Dean seized the opportunity.

“The Slaughterhouse Nine is _gone_? Really?”

It was Amy who answered, sitting on Victoria’s other side. “Yeah. The PRT didn’t say it outright for PR reasons, but they’re all dead.”

“Oh my gosh,” Dean said.

The Slaughterhouse Nine was gone. That was huge. They’d been such a thing -- like an especially awful real-life boogeyman -- for Dean’s entire life. And they were dead, now.

Their new Protectorate hero had _helped_ get rid of them. The new person none of the Wards had even gotten to meet yet, who was supposed to have their first official day _today_, had helped the Triumvirate kill one of the most notorious villain groups in the United States.

Seriously, what?

The Wards hadn’t even been told anything about the new hero. The _internet_ knew the hero’s gender and name before they did. No wonder Dennis had been so agitated.

Dean was mostly just confused. That wasn’t how it worked. New heroes didn’t just go out with the _Triumvirate_ and take out a massive S-class threat on their first official day. Except, apparently, for when they did.

More than anything, he was even more anxious to meet the new hero now.

Finally, their half-day of school was over and they could go. Chris and Dennis rushed out. Dean tried not to look like he was hurrying.

Before long, Gallant was in the PRT building. The Wards weren’t _officially_ meeting the new hero -- nothing had been arranged -- but the new hero was supposed to be at the PRT Headquarters, so they were all definitely going to hover until they got to meet her. Gallant supposed their intentions were going to be pretty obvious as soon as she got mobbed by teenagers.

Clockblocker and Kid Win had rushed off to find her, hoping to do so before getting sent off on patrol or something. Gallant was not going to give in to temptation. That would be childish.

“Oh, hey, you’re one of the Wards, aren’t you?”

Gallant startled and whipped around, because there was not supposed to be anyone behind him. There were other people in the hallway, but not directly behind him, and if nothing else, Gallant usually had a pretty good idea of where people were.

And yet, despite his power clearly marking the space behind him as empty, there stood the new hero, easily recognizable from the press release photos. She was smiling at him, looking polite and friendly. And yet she was a complete void of emotion, absolutely nothing coming from her. That wasn’t possible, emotions were too strange and esoteric for somebody to not have any at all.

...Something about her was messing with his power, then. That was -- kind of freaky, but no call to be rude.

“Uh, yeah,” he said after far too long a pause. “I am a Ward. I’m Gallant.”

“Nice to meet you, Gallant. I’m Auspice,” she said, holding out her hand for a handshake. She looked around, then leaned in and lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Don’t tell anyone, but I was hoping I’d get to meet some of the Wards.”

Gallant laughed a little. “We’ve all been looking forward to meeting you, too,” he said. “Especially after this morning.”

“Oh, really?” Auspice sounded curious. “I thought the news would have dropped after you were in school.”

“It did, but that didn’t stop anyone,” Gallant said. “Everyone’s been talking about it all day.”

“Mm, yeah, that makes sense. Some of the others were less than impressed that they found out from the news,” Auspice said.

“You -- you didn’t tell them?” Gallant asked incredulously.

Auspice shrugged. “Well, I told Director Piggot. And I had permission from on high, you know.”

Gallant went to reply, but before he could speak, he spotted somebody behind Auspice. “Incoming,” he said.

“Hm?” She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, more Wards?”

But there was no time to give her a more detailed warning; Clockblocker and Kid Win were already upon them. Kid Win was all but vibrating with excitement. Clockblocker was just as excited, though less visibly so.

“Hi,” Kid Win said breathlessly. “I’m Kid Win.”

“Hi. I’m Auspice,” she said, holding out her hand, which Kid Win shook without seeming to notice.

“You fought the Slaughterhouse Nine?” Kid Win said.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” she said.

Gallant raised his eyebrows.

“‘In a manner of speaking’? What does_ that_ mean?” Clockblocker said.

Auspice shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t much of a fight.”

Kid Win and Clockblocker laughed. Gallant had the ominous feeling, however, that Auspice hadn’t meant it as a joke.

“That’s awesome,” Clockblocker said. “I’m Clockblocker, by the way.”

He offered a hand.

“Clock, don’t do it,” Gallant said, knowing full well what Clockblocker was like.

It was too late. Auspice took the proffered hand…

“Nice to meet you,” she said.

...and nothing happened?

Gallant stared. Kid Win stared. Clockblocker looked down, then back up, in confusion.

“What even is your power?” Clockblocker blurted.

“Ehh, well, I’m not actually supposed to talk about it,” Auspice said. More staring. She added, “My power is literally classified by the PRT, so nobody is allowed to talk about it. Apparently nobody is allowed to know what my power is, unless they already know.”

That was… weird. Gallant’s first assumption, given his own situation, was that Auspice’s power was something so PR unfriendly that they didn’t want it getting out. But they’d given Gallant a fake power and an excuse for him to use his power, so they definitely would have done the same with a hero like Auspice. There was no way for an active hero to avoid using their power.

“What, so you’re not allowed to talk about your power _at all_?” Kid Win said, frowning. “That kinda sucks.”

“I guess.” Auspice shrugged. “I’m not going to be able to be a hero for very long without people getting some idea, of course. I think the general idea is supposed to be that my power is just complete BS.” She laughed. “So I can talk about it in that context.”

“Complete BS? What, like Eidolon?” Clockblocker said.

Auspice smiled. “Yes, pretty much.” Before they could ask more questions, she said, “And that’s all I can tell you. Like I said, I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

Gallant doubted either Kid Win or Clockblocker would respect that. They were both more the ‘pester somebody until they answered the question’ type.

“That’s why the Triumvirate brought you with them to fight the Slaughterhouse Nine, then?” he asked.

It worked; Kid Win, at least, was distracted.

“What was it like to fight the Slaughterhouse?” Kid Win asked before Auspice could answer.

“Like I said, it wasn’t much of a fight. I mean, the Triumvirate were also there, so it’s not like I did everything myself,” Auspice said. “It actually went really fast.”

It was a good thing Auspice seemed patient, because Gallant could already tell that Clockblocker and Kid Win were not going to leave her alone.

* * *

“What do you think her power is? Auspice’s, I mean,” Clockblocker said later, once the Wards were alone.

Vista and Aegis had joined them, which meant only Shadow Stalker was missing, and Shadow Stalker didn’t really hang out with the other Wards much anyway.

“I mean, my power didn’t even work on her,” Clockblocker continued. “I’ve _never_ had my power not work before.”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, my power doesn’t work on her, either,” Gallant said.

“You tried to use your power on her?” Aegis asked, a little sharply.

“No -- not _actively_. I wouldn’t use my power on another hero without permission! But I couldn’t sense her emotions at all, it was weird.”

“There aren’t many powers that make people immune to other powers,” Vista said.

“Guys, if Auspice’s power is classified, I doubt we’re supposed to be theorizing about it either,” Aegis said halfheartedly.

He was trying to be the responsible one, but he was curious too; Gallant could tell.

Clockblocker scoffed. “So what? They can’t stop us from having opinions, can they?”

“What do you mean, Vista? You think she has some kind of power nullification power?” Kin Win asked.

“Yeah. I mean, what else could have kept Clock’s power from working on her?” Vista said.

“That could be true…” Gallant said slowly. “Power nullification is really rare, though, and I could still sense _other_ people’s emotions while around Auspice. Aren’t powers like that always area of effect?”

“Maybe she has really precise control over it,” Clockblocker said. “And hey, I was looking up the Slaughterhouse earlier, and one of their members, Hatchetface, had a power nullification power, and it made him really dangerous. Plus a bunch of the others had powers that made them really hard to kill -- like the Siberian and Crawler, two of the most notorious Brutes. If Auspice had a power like that, it could explain why the Triumvirate brought her with them, right?”

“It could also explain why her power is classified. Nobody likes the idea of their power being turned off,” Aegis added, apparently giving up on being the responsible one.

“Especially if she’s a really strong power nullifier! Maybe her range is really big?” Kid Win said.

“But she’d cause problems here and in the Rig, if she was turning people’s powers off,” Gallant pointed out.

“So then maybe it’s more specific than that. She might be able to target individual people, even,” Vista said. “That would be a lot more helpful in a fight with allies.”

“And it probably just has a passive effect that makes it so that powers don’t work on her directly,” Clockblocker said. “That would explain why our powers didn’t work on her, without her meaning to use her power or anything.”

Gallant thought about it. “Okay, that would make sense,” he said.

“Guys, just remember, whether we’re right or not, you can’t talk about this to anybody, okay?” Aegis said. “We don’t want anybody to get in trouble, us or Auspice.”

“Well, yeah, obviously,” Clockblocker said. Gallant could almost hear him grinning. “It’s a _secret_.”


	7. Omake: The mugger scene applies to SIs?!

_February ??, 2011_

_Random mugger_

Brockton Bay was a hard city to live in. It was especially hard to be a small-time criminal in. It had one of the highest cape populations in the U.S, but that wasn’t that big a deal, because there were still only like fifty capes to worry about. The problem was that it was practically ruled by the gangs, and anybody who wasn’t part of one of the gangs was smart enough not to wander around in the areas that were easy to mug people in. 

So John had to be careful. An Asian person walked by? Probably ABB. A white person with visible tattoos? Almost definitely E88. Even the druggies were startlingly willing to shank people! ‘Shank’ was also totally the correct word, because the chances of their weapon being a legitimate weapon were low. 

Anyway. 

John had been waiting for more than an hour for somebody to pass by that wasn’t 1. Obviously ABB, 2. Obviously E88, or 3. In possession of the eau de psycho junkie. He would just prefer not to get stabbed himself in a mugging attempt, okay. 

Finally, an opportunity walked up. 

A young woman, walking alone, wearing clothes that were casual, but looked new and were pretty high quality. No purse, but she was holding a _nice_ looking smartphone. White, no visible tattoos, far too steady to be either high or going through withdrawal. 

A perfect target. 

Once the woman got close enough, John jumped out of the alley he was hiding in, brandishing his knife at her. The woman looked up from her phone slowly. 

“Hey, lady, hand over the phone and any money you got on you and nobody has to get hurt, all right?” John said in his best authoritative voice. 

The woman blinked at him. She looked down at his knife, then back up, and blinked again. “...Are you mugging me?” she asked finally, squinting like she was confused. 

“Uh, yeah. Obviously,” John said, making a vague motion with his knife. 

“Oh.” 

“Hurry up, I’m not playing around!” John said. 

The woman looked down at her phone contemplatively, like she was seriously considering whether or not her phone was worth getting stabbed. John could tell her from experience, it definitely was not. Very little was worth getting stabbed. 

“Hurry up!” John snapped, stepping closer and waving his knife around like a madman. That usually scared people. 

“All right, all right!” the woman said, more in the vein of somebody being pestered by a younger sibling than that of somebody being threatened with a knife. 

She unhooked an earbud from her ear, then reached into her pocket and pulled out a wallet. Just then, there was a glint in the corner of John’s eye, and he looked up -- and was slammed into by a black and white blur which knocked him straight onto his back on the ground. 

John groaned and went limp. It figured. He finally gets a good target, and a hero shows up. 

The hero -- because it had to be a hero, nobody else would jump off a roof like that -- got off of him, standing up, but John just kept lying there, eyes closed, pitying himself and trying to get his breath back. Finally, John decided to face the music. He opened his eyes and sat up, to much protest from his back. 

The hero was standing over him, a smug smile on the visible half of her face. He didn’t recognize the costume, but there had been something on the news about a new hero in Brockton Bay. Must have been her. The woman he’d tried to mug, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. She must have booked it while he was distracted. That was a little strange; didn’t even stick around to thank her rescuer, meet a hero? 

“I’m calling the police,” the hero said. She must have meant on a headset or something, because she wasn’t holding a phone. “No offense, but you’re a little below my paygrade.” 

“I have never been so happy to be insulted,” John said. 

The hero snorted. “A mugger with a sense of humor, nice. Stop trying to mug people, okay? It’s not very nice.” 

John nodded earnestly. “I will never try to mug anyone again,” he promised. It just wasn’t worth it. 

The hero stayed until the cops showed up, then left. John let himself be taken into custody without a fight. 

Maybe once he got out, he’d move somewhere else. Idaho, or something, somewhere with _no capes_. 


	8. Making Things Better

_February 2, 2011_

_Armsmaster_

“Hello? Armsmaster?” came a cautious voice from the doorway of Armsmaster’s lab. Auspice.

He grunted in acknowledgement and didn’t look up. He would close the door to his lab if he could, but unfortunately as the leader of his Protectorate branch, he couldn’t afford to close himself off like that.

Auspice walked closer to stand at his shoulder. “Miss Militia said that there’s a monthly meeting with Director Piggot in an hour and asked me to remind you of it,” she said.

What? An hour? Armsmaster checked a clock and found that it was, indeed, much later than he’d thought. Even so, a human reminder was unnecessary; he had an alarm set to go off in time for him to get to the meeting.

“Understood,” Armsmaster said simply.

There was a moment of silence as Auspice, presumably, debated whether or not she had completed the task Miss Militia had given her.

“All right,” she said finally. But there was no sound of footsteps as she left. Instead, she spoke again, “What are you working on?”

She sounded genuinely interested. And either his initial explanation would scare her away as getting technical did with most non-Tinkers, or, given that she had a copy of his power if not his experience with it, she might be able to keep up. Her input might be useful, even.

“Combat prediction software,” he said.

“Really? That sounds useful. Wouldn’t you need to program it for every individual person, though? At least with parahumans.”

“That is the main problem so far, yes,” Armsmaster admitted. “Currently, it only has an accuracy rate of 30%, which is, of course, unacceptable. Optimally, it would be able to predict an enemy with only knowledge of their capabilities and enough information of general strategy and logic.”

Fifty minutes later, Armsmaster’s alarm went off, making both of them jump. Auspice looked at the clock.

“Oops,” she said.

Later, after the meeting, Armsmaster was no longer distracted by immediate Tinkering, and his suspicion kicked back in. He wondered why Auspice was suddenly so interested in his tech.

So, when she approached him again, he asked. “Why the sudden interest in Tinkertech?”

“Uhh, because it’s interesting…? Do I need a reason to have an interest in something?” Auspice said. “You don’t have to worry about me stealing your tech, or anything. I don’t think Tinkertech is the right path for me, anyway.”

A diplomatic way to say that she was powerful enough to not need Tinkertech, Armsmaster noted. It was reasonable enough; grating though it may be, something like Armsmaster’s armor was laughably unnecessary to somebody who could probably kill an Endbringer in one blow.

“I really do just think that it’s interesting, and it’s not like I’m ever really going to use my copied Tinker powers for my own sake. I’m… sorry, if I offended you in some way,” she finished, frowning now, as though truly upset by the idea of offending Armsmaster.

“No. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Armsmaster said. It was possible that he’d overreacted somewhat. “...I believe you were saying something, before we were interrupted,” he added as a peace offering.

Auspice brightened immediately. “Oh yeah!”

Armsmaster supposed that, if Auspice was willing to lend him her time and opinions -- which had, as he’d expected, been very useful -- then he should take advantage of it while he could.

_February 4, 2011_

_Kamil Armstrong_

Kamil was surprised when his phone rang with a call from Emily Piggot, director of the PRT ENE. Though they may have been PRT directors in nearby cities, they rarely actually spoke unless in an official meeting. For her to call him directly was… rare.

“This is Director Armstrong,” he said, answering his phone. “How can I help you, Director Piggot?”

Director Piggot was the straightforward type; getting right to the point would be best for everyone involved.

“Director Armstrong. Auspice, one of the capes in my Protectorate, has information about the villain gang known as the Teeth, who she says are currently in Boston,” Piggot said, sounding tired. Before Kamil could reply to that, she continued, “She would like permission to operate in Boston in order to apprehend those villains.”

Kamil hesitated. “Auspice? The name sounds familiar.”

“She’s a new hero. You may recognize her from the takedown of the Slaughterhouse Nine two weeks ago,” Piggot said.

Oh. Yes, Kamil recognized the name. Auspice was definitely a mysterious hero; even Kamil, as a director of the PRT, didn’t have clearance to know her power. But she must have been powerful. Kamil wasn’t sure of the wisdom of a direct attack on the Teeth, even if they could find them, but if Piggot -- a cautious woman -- had faith in Auspice’s abilities, then…

“Yes, I remember now. Well, if you’re confident in her, then I can have my Protectorate leader arrange a team for a raid,” Kamil said leadingly.

“That won’t be necessary,” Piggot said, to Kamil’s surprise.

“It won’t?”

“Auspice just wants permission to operate in your city. She won’t need any assistance,” Piggot said, sounding even more tired than she had before. It sounded like she was grinding her teeth for a moment, and then she added, “Of course, your people will need to take the Teeth into custody afterwards, and Auspice has said that she doesn’t mind if your Protectorate takes credit for the arrest.” Her reluctance was palpable.

Kamil was surprised by that, but he was still stuck on --

“Wait, let me get this straight. You really believe that _one hero_ can take down the Teeth alone?” he asked, incredulous. “From our estimates, they have half a dozen capes!”

“I have reason to believe that Auspice will not have any issues,” Piggot said evenly.

Kamil had to sit back in his chair. Piggot politely waited for him to process that.

He covered his eyes with one hand. “She’s that strong?”

“Yes.”

“And there’s no chance of her killing the Butcher, accidentally or otherwise?”

“She assured me that was not a risk.”

Kamil sighed. “All right. What kind of timeline are we looking at for this? A couple of hours, a couple of days?”

“I’m pretty sure she’s already in Boston,” Piggot said with exasperation. “So, a couple of minutes. If you agree to give her permission, then I suggest you mobilize PRT and Protectorate response immediately, Director Armstrong.”

Kamil weighed his options. Letting an unknown hero attack a major gang alone in his city, versus having the Teeth off the street. And having his department get the credit for it; Kamil had to admit that that was a factor, too.

Kamil took in a deep breath. “All right,” he said on the exhale. “Do you have an address or something?”

“I do not. I can have Auspice contact you,” Piggot said.

“I would appreciate that. Thank you, Director Piggot,” Kamil said.

“Of course,” Piggot said. Then, in a rare show of sympathy, she said, “Good luck, Director Armstrong.”

Piggot hung up.

Less than two minutes later, Kamil got another call. He answered the phone.

“Director Armstrong.”

“Hello, Director Armstrong. I’m Auspice,” she said. She sounded young.

“You’re the one who wants to take on the Teeth,” Kamil said, hoping to get a measure of her personality.

He doubted Piggot could be fooled by the overly-confident type, but it was hard to tell.

“Yes,” Auspice said. “I am confident I can subdue them quickly, with no risk of injury or collateral damage. Also, I have a way to make sure the Butcher will no longer be an issue.”

Kamil sat up straight. “What do you mean by that?”

“I can’t tell you the specifics because of the gag order regarding my power, but I can remove the Butcher’s powers, including the one that causes them to jump to other parahumans.”

“You can remove the Butcher’s powers?” Kamil repeated incredulously. “Permanently?”

“Yes,” she said, then, after a brief pause, added, “Obviously, it would be best if that didn’t become common knowledge.”

“Yes, obviously,” Kamil agreed, because _nobody_ needed to know that there was a cape who could permanently remove other people’s powers. If it was true. “I mean no offense, but that is rather unbelievable.”

“I’m aware of that. It is the kind of thing that nobody could believe unless it was proven,” Auspice said. “And, given that I don’t exactly want to go running around removing people’s powers, I felt that the Butcher would be a good target to use to prove it -- because there are few other ways to keep the Butcher from continuing to be a problem otherwise.”

She made it sound so reasonable. And Piggot had been confident in her, and she had to deal with her all the time. Suddenly sympathetic to Piggot, Kamil decided to just give in.

He doubted Bastion would be happy about it, but he’d certainly appreciate getting the credit for it, so it would probably be fine.

“All right. I’ll trust you. Give me an address,” Kamil said.

He could hear the smile in her voice when Auspice said, “Thank you.”

_February 4, 2011_

_Bastion_

Bastion was already in a bad mood by the time he, two of his Protectorate members, and a squad of PRT mooks got to the abandoned warehouse the Director had told them to go to. Between some newbie from Brockton Bay just up and deciding to take down a gang Bastion -- and others -- had been trying to get for years and the Director ordering him around like an attack dog, Bastion was pretty angry.

The warehouse in question, along with the entire surrounding area, was completely ordinary. There was no noise or damage to suggest that a parahuman battle had or was taking place.

Shortly after Bastion and the others arrived, however, one of the warehouse’s large sliding doors opened with a cacophonous sound. Bastion did not jump, damn it. With the door open, a figure was visible inside the warehouse: a woman wearing a hooded jacket.

Auspice, Bastion recognized. The uppity newbie.

She waved at them.

Bastion strode up to her. “You said that the Teeth were here?” he said impatiently.

“I did say that,” Auspice said, and gestured behind her, into the dark warehouse. “Oh, wait, let me get that.”

Auspice took a couple of steps and flicked a lightswitch, turning on the warehouse’s overhead lights and revealing that the warehouse was _full_ of people all dressed in the typical style of the Teeth. There were probably twenty people total in the warehouse.

Bastion definitely did jump, that time, reflexively creating a forcefield between him and the group of people in the warehouse.

“It’s fine,” Auspice said at the same time that Bastion realized that none of the figures were moving. “They’re not going to attack.”

“What did you do to them?” Bastion asked, peering closer.

“I just froze them in time,” Auspice said casually. “And they’re going to start unfreezing soon, probably, so it would probably be best to start foaming them now.”

Gesturing for his fellow heroes and the PRT members to follow him, Bastion ventured into the freaky warehouse. All of the Teeth in the warehouse did indeed seem to be frozen in time, completely unmoving. Except one -- there was one woman who was not frozen. She wasn’t standing, instead crumpled in on herself on her knees, which was why it had taken Bastion so long to notice her. It was easy, then, to identify her as the Butcher, her samurai-style armor being rather distinctive, as were the massive bow and gatling gun on the floor next to her.

Bastion’s forcefield went right back up as he held his hand out to stop the others.

“Why didn’t you freeze the _most dangerous one_?” he hissed at Auspice.

Auspice blinked. She turned towards the Butcher. “Oh. It’s fine,” she said again. Bastion thought he might hate that phrase. “She won’t be able to cause any trouble anymore.”

The smugly pleased curl to her lips was enough to make Bastion pause where he might not have otherwise. He’d learned to be wary of people looking like that.

“What did you do to her?” he said warily.

“I suppressed her power,” Auspice said.

“Suppressed…? What, like Animos’ power?” Bastion said.

Auspice nodded. “Yeah, basically,” she said. She shrugged a little. “Except indefinitely.”

“In -- _indefinitely_?” Bastion repeated.

“Yes. It’ll last until I undo it,” Auspice said.

While Bastion was floored from the _implications _of that, Auspice looked at him carefully.

“Hopefully it’s obvious that we don’t want that getting around, but also, the PRT classified my power, so you’re not allowed to tell anybody about it,” she told him frankly.

Bastion gritted his teeth and glared at her. “I know that,” he snapped. “What are we supposed to do about this, then?”

He gestured vaguely towards the Butcher, who really looked pitiful.

“Claim that you sent the Butcher to the Birdcage and actually send her to a psych ward or something under her civilian identity,” Auspice said, like that was no big deal. “She’s pretty much harmless now, compared to before, although she’ll probably still be violent once she recovers, and she’s definitely still crazy.”

Bastion put a hand to his forehead and breathed, reminding himself not to yell at her. Making him do the annoying part; of course she was. “You’re giving us the credit for this, right?” he said.

“Sure.”

“Okay.” Bastion took another deep breath. “Which ones are capes?”

Auspice easily pointed out five people in addition to the Butcher. The PRT squad got to foaming people, while the other two Protectorate capes supervised.

“Thank you for your help,” Bastion bit out grudgingly.

“Sure thing,” Auspice said. “Well, it seems like you guys have this in hand, so I’m going to go.”

_Good_. Bastion restrained himself. “Fine,” he said.

Auspice seemed amused, but she didn’t comment, just turned and walked out of the warehouse.

_February 16, 2011_

_Rebecca Costa-Brown_

A portal with shimmering gold edges formed on the wall of Rebecca’s office, next to the door. An arm reached through the portal to knock, politely, on the inside of the door. In lieu of being able to knock on the outside of the door, presumably, due to the cameras in the hallway where there were none in the office.

Rebecca sighed. “Yes, Auspice? What do you want?”

Auspice passed entirely through her portal. Apparently sensing Rebecca’s lack of patience -- or, more likely, using Path to Victory to predict the best way to approach her -- she answered quickly as she sat in one of the chairs opposite Rebecca.

“The Fallen.” She frowned. “Wait, that sounds wrong, let me rephrase. I want to cripple the Fallen. Yeah, that’s better.”

Rebecca resisted the urge to sigh again. “And you want me to deal with the legal side of it,” she surmised, shaking her head. “Fine. Who and where?”

“Well, there’s a lot of them, but only a few really important ones,” Auspice said. “So, we’ve got the head of the Mathers branch near Kansas City, her son, her other son, who is also the head of the McVeay branch, and the four Crowley siblings who run their own branch.” She thought about it for a moment. “That’s all of them, I think. The really important ones, anyway; the others should be easy enough for other people to capture later.”

“The leader of the Mathers branch,” Rebecca repeated. “Also the very powerful Stranger who can affect anyone who has interacted with her in any way?”

“Well, yes. You’re aware of what I did to the Butcher, right?”

Rebecca was aware. One of Auspice’s abilities that she had not shared with them directly: removing other people’s powers permanently. Whether it was a largely-unused part of her own power or a result of altering powers she’d copied was unclear.

“You plan to remove her power?”

Auspice nodded. “Hers and her two son’s powers, Valefor and Lionheart; they’re all annoying Master slash Strangers. The others should be containable, maybe Birdcage worthy, I’m not sure.”

Rebecca thought about it. The Fallen were a large organization, behind both small and large time crime across the country, largely protected by a few powerful people. The removal of the Mathers head especially would be very helpful.

“All right. Do it. I’ll handle it,” she said.

Auspice smiled. “Great!”

Rebecca had expected her to leave immediately, but to her surprise, Auspice stayed sitting.

“One other thing,” she said.

Rebecca gestured for her to go on.

“There’s an Endbringer attack coming soon.”

Rebecca went still. That was true, there was; it had been close to four months since the Behemoth attack. Rebecca, like many other heroes, never forgot the loose Endbringer schedule.

This time, however, was different, and for all that Auspice had killed Scion, Rebecca hadn’t yet seriously considered the possibilities.

When and where would be nice to know, but it wasn’t really important. More important was, “Can you kill it?” Rebecca asked.

Auspice spread her hands as though to say, _well, duh_. “Of course I can. That’s easy-peasy compared to some of the things I’ve done. That’s actually what I wanted to ask about, though. How easy should it _look_ for me to kill an Endbringer? Like, are we talking ‘swat it like a bug’, or ‘fake a long fight’?”

“I’ll talk about it with the others,” Rebecca said. Personally, she was leaning towards ‘swat it like a bug’, but she was aware that might not necessarily be her rational mind speaking. “Which one is it, when, and where?”

“In that order, the Simurgh, the 24th of this month, and Canberra, Australia,” Auspice said.

Rebecca nodded. “I’ll still talk to the others, but I believe a drawn out fight with the Simurgh is too risky,” she said.

“She’s definitely the hardest to contain,” Auspice said. She shrugged, then bounced to her feet. “Well, whatever. Let me know what you guys decide. I’m going to go start dismantling the Fallen before I kill off the first of their ‘gods’.”

Waving lightly, Auspice created a portal and disappeared into it.

Rebecca got to work on the paperwork she was going to need.

Less than an hour later, the PRT had seven new villains in custody, three of them minus their powers. If nothing else, Auspice worked quickly.

_February 24, 2011_

_Dragon_

The morning of the 24th of February, the Protectorate sent out a warning -- to everyone -- that their Thinkers had predicted an Endbringer attack in Canberra, Australia.

That was unheard of. Thinkers, especially precogs, had been trying to use their powers on Endbringers, largely to no effect, since Behemoth first appeared. Dragon and Armsmaster were working on a computer program that could predict the Endbringers, but it wasn’t finished yet.

Dragon had her doubts about the exact source of the prediction, but she wasn’t complaining. She highly doubted the Protectorate would send out a false warning, and the twenty minute warning gave her time to send one of her suits to meet up with the transport for the Seattle capes. Her creations were fast, but it was a long flight to Australia.

Canberra was chaotic, though considerably less so than other Endbringer battles Dragon had been to; the forewarning had allowed the civilians to be evacuated and they were on their way out already, leaving the center of the city where capes were congregating otherwise empty.

If it had been Leviathan, they would have gathered closer to the coast, but Canberra wasn’t close enough to the ocean, which meant it was going to be Behemoth or the Simurgh, and the last attack had been Behemoth, so it was almost definitely the Simurgh. Whenever the Simurgh attacked, she tended to hover above the center of the city, whether to make sure her range covered the entire thing or for some other reason.

The sky was clear and bright -- the Simurgh’s preferred weather; more than eighty percent of her attacks occurred on sunny, cloudless days.

In the direct center of Canberra was a parliamentary building, built into a hill, with walkways and grassy gardens on top of it, and a tall, elaborate flagpole sticking off the top, above a glass skylight into the building. A perfect target for the Simurgh, and a terrible one for everyone else. It was undoubtedly a busy area normally, with crowds of people. Dragon could see how an attack would have gone without any warning.

Dragon looked around, cataloguing the present capes, who were waiting on top of the parliament building. The Triumvirate were there, of course. Narwhal was already there, too. Armsmaster and a few other members of the Brockton Bay Protectorate, including their newest hero. Cinereal was there, the lone member of her Protectorate. Chevalier and Myrddin were there, with a couple of members of each of their Protectorate departments. Exalt, standing with the rest of the Houston Protectorate minus Eidolon.

There were a lot of heroes. There were less villains, but still a good amount.

It wasn’t the best turnout Dragon had seen, though; nobody liked fighting the Simurgh, and Australia also didn’t have as many capes as other countries did. A lot more people went to defend their own country from Endbringers.

Legend was arranging people into the usual groups. Blasters with him, Alexandria packages with Alexandria, people with shields with Narwhal. The support capes -- healers and Thinkers -- were being sent to make a camp outside the city. There were things specific to a Simurgh fight, as well; capes were put into further groups, these ones for time. People from Group One would fight first, then when they were running out of time, they would switch out with people from Group Two, and so on. Dragon knew how it worked.

There was still a couple of minutes left, if the prediction was accurate. Doing a quick headcount, Dragon gave out armbands to be distributed to the capes who would be involved in the battle. These ones were the Simurgh specific ones, with timers set to go before any of them could spend too much time around the Simurgh.

Once Dragon’s part in that was done and other people were making sure everyone got an armband, she made her way over to Armsmaster.

Armsmaster went to every Endbringer battle he could, as Dragon did. It was the life both of them had chosen. That didn’t make it any easier to face the thought that this might be the Endbringer battle that cost Armsmaster his life.

“Armsmaster,” she said in greeting, dipping her suit’s head like a nod.

Armsmaster wasn’t one for idle chit chat at the best of times, which an Endbringer battle certainly was not, so Dragon didn’t expect much from him.

He spared her a glance, and nodded back. “Dragon.”

The new Brockton Bay hero and rising superstar, Auspice, leaned around him to wave. “Hi, Dragon,” she said.

Dragon had spoken with Auspice over her usual video chat a couple of times before. Auspice had been spending a considerable amount of time in Armsmaster’s lab with him lately. Dragon was studiously ignoring the envy that she experienced any time she focused any attention on that fact.

“Hello, Auspice,” Dragon said.

Auspice left soon after to make her way over to Legend and the Blasters. Dragon made a note of it. Auspice’s power was so highly classified that Dragon didn’t know about it, and though Armsmaster likely did, he hadn’t shared it with her.

As people had left the city to wait for their turns, the number of waiting capes dwindled further and further, until they had worryingly few combatants. That was one of the biggest disadvantages of fighting the Simurgh. Dragon was in the first group, as were the Triumvirate, Armsmaster, and Auspice.

It wasn’t long before the first sign of the Simurgh’s appearance became obvious: the Simurgh’s scream, which seemed to reverberate throughout Dragon’s processes in an impossible manner. It was one of the quirks of the Simurgh, or perhaps of Dragon; the mental attack affected Dragon, though she was not there in person, nor did she have a typical brain to attack.

Everyone readied themselves. The armbands’ countdowns began.

The Simurgh descended soon after, hurtling downwards like a shooting star directly over the tip of the flagpole. The building started collapsing under them, the flagpole breaking into pieces, as did buildings all around, and people who could fly lifted off, while those who couldn’t hurried for solid ground. Dragon was distracted for a moment catching several people and bringing them somewhere safer -- for a given value of ‘safe’.

When Dragon looked up, it was to see a figure distinguishable as Auspice, flying higher and closer to the Simurgh than anyone else. Foolishly, if she was indeed just a Blaster -- without a Brute rating or some kind of Breaker form, the Simurgh would crush her like a bug.

Other people had noticed, too. Some people shouted, trying to warn her. The flying Brutes hurried to catch up to her.

One of the Simurgh’s person-sized pieces of rubble was heading straight for Auspice.

Auspice brought one hand up, and released a brilliant golden laser, heading for the Simurgh. Dragon analyzed it. It was a big laser, by most Blaster standards; probably five feet around. But Dragon had seen bigger things do next to no damage to an Endbringer. Even the Simurgh, as the smallest and most fragile seeming of the Endbringers, was terrifyingly durable.

The Simurgh also had a tendency to block. Several pieces of her growing rubble field swung into place between her and the laser. But the laser went straight through the rubble as though it wasn’t there.

The constant, piercing scream in the background went discordant suddenly, loud and jarring enough that people clapped their hands uselessly over their ears, as though the Simurgh had lost control of it. The Simurgh shot to the side in an attempt to dodge, but didn’t quite make it. The laser impacted the Simurgh perfectly center-mass, and then _kept going_. Where the laser had passed, the Simurgh’s body was entirely gone from shoulder to hip, large chunks of wings gone too.

The assembled capes went quiet in shock. The Simurgh’s scream stopped abruptly. The floating debris began to fall to the earth.

After a long moment, the remaining pieces of the Simurgh’s body belatedly succumbed to gravity, and the Simurgh fell from the sky.


	9. PHO Interlude

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**♦Topic: The Simurgh Has Fallen!**  
**In: Boards ► World ► News**

**Bagrat** (Original Poster) (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)  
Posted on February 24, 2011:

Earlier today, the Simurgh attacked Canberra, Australia (that's Australia's capital). Thanks to Protectorate Thinkers, there was enough warning to evacuate the city beforehand.

But that's not the important part. The important part is this: according to a number of on-site capes, Auspice, a newbie Protectorate hero from Brockton Bay, attacked _and killed_ the Simurgh during the attack. As a result, this is the first Endbringer attack ever to end with zero casualties (except for the Endbringer). The Protectorate and other organizations have since officially confirmed the rumors (here's a link to the Protectorate's press conference about it). They said a whole lot of nothing else, so it's not entirely clear what actually happened, but everyone who was there pretty much agrees on the basics.

So, it's official, everyone. The Simurgh, Ziz, Israfel, Ulama, the 'Hopekiller', the Third, whatever you want to call it, is dead. Let's celebrate.  
  
**(Showing Page 1 of 67)**  
  
**► DigaWell**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
SERIOUSLY? That's awesome!

**► Saskatchew**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
Good riddance. I doubt anyone's upset about THIS Endbringer battle casualty

**► Aiming_Low**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
Pics or it didn't happen

**► More_Or_Less**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Aiming_Low  
I mean, yeah, it's a little hard to believe, but you know there's never any actual pictures or video from Endbringer battles. Everyone tends to be busy trying not to die.

**► RobinU**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
Justice for Lausanne, and all the other cities that were crippled, destroyed, and quarantined because of the Simurgh. I'm definitely celebrating tonight and taking off work tomorrow

**► SorryNotSorry**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
It's hard to believe anybody could kill an Endbringer, after, what, twenty years? Especially some newbie. I've never even heard of that hero before now. Still, not complaining, and I doubt the Protectorate would have confirmed it if it wasn't true.

@RobinU Yeah, seconded on the celebrating. I'm gonna have a cold one in Auspice's honor

**► Nakyak** (Cape Geek)  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
I think I have heard of Auspice, actually. Wasn't she that cape that supposedly helped the Triumvirate take down the Slaughterhouse Nine last month? Her power was already a huge mystery back then, but I REALLY want to know what it is now!

**► NobodyYou'dKnow**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
Good riddance to the Simurgh! She won't be missed.

**► ShortyShort**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
WAIT, the Simurgh is seriously dead??? Really?!

Here's holding out for Leviathan next *fingers crossed*

**► namesarehard**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
So, does this make Auspice the 'Hopekillerkiller'?

@ShortyShort Shh, don't jinx it  
  
**End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 65 , 66, 67**

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**♦Topic: The Simurgh Has Fallen!**  
**In: Boards ► World ► News**

**Bagrat** (Original Poster) (The Guy In The Know) (Veteran Member)  
Posted on February 24, 2011:

Earlier today, the Simurgh attacked Canberra, Australia (that's Australia's capital). Thanks to Protectorate Thinkers, there was enough warning to evacuate the city beforehand.

But that's not the important part. The important part is this: according to a number of on-site capes, Auspice, a newbie Protectorate hero from Brockton Bay, attacked _and killed_ the Simurgh during the attack. As a result, this is the first Endbringer attack ever to end with zero casualties (except for the Endbringer). The Protectorate and other organizations have since officially confirmed the rumors (here's a link to the Protectorate's press conference about it). They said a whole lot of nothing else, so it's not entirely clear what actually happened, but everyone who was there pretty much agrees on the basics.

So, it's official, everyone. The Simurgh, Ziz, Israfel, Ulama, the 'Hopekiller', the Third, whatever you want to call it, is dead. Let's celebrate.  
  
**(Showing Page 28 of 72)**  
  
**► SecretSurfer** (Muted)  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
Look, I'm just saying. There's a couple irrefutable facts! 1. Every time Scion showed up to an Endbringer battle, the Endbringer basically immediately fled, implying that he's more of a danger to them than ANY OTHER PERSON. 2. Auspice is the only person known to have done enough damage to an Endbringer to kill it.

The conclusion is obvious.

**► Antigone**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@SecretSurfer What? That's not obvious at all.

**► Tumbles**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Antigone I mean, there is kind of a lot of evidence, even besides the fact that Scion and Auspice are obviously the two most powerful parahumans ever and are the only people who ever really hurt an Endbringer.

So, look. We have mid-January-ish, where Scion disappears. Just, completely drops off the map. Then, late-ish-January, Auspice makes her first appearance as a hero. I mean, okay, that might not be anything alone. However! There's also Auspice's color theme: white and gold (and black), where Scion was gold and wore white. Coincidence? There's no such thing.

Auspice is OBVIOUSLY Scion

**► BooptheSnoot**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Tumbles Yeah... Obviously /sarcasm. I mean, seriously, after thirty years Scion suddenly decided to join the Protectorate. As a FEMALE hero? Doubtful.

**► Ryan_Reynolds** (Unverified Cape)  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
Um, guys, Auspice can't secretly be Scion masquerading as a girl for some reason... Because she's obviously Eidolon's illegitimate child. Duh.

**► Space Zombie**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Ryan_Reynolds

...Source?

**► Lolitup**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Ryan_Reynolds Wait, who says she's illegitimate?? Maybe Eidolon is secretly married, you don't know

**► Ryan_Reynolds** (Unverified Cape)  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Space Zombie  
My sources are as follows: [Eidolon_Hood.jpg], [Auspice_Hood.jpg]  
and also, Eidolon's power is complete BS and so is Auspice's. We already know that powers run in families, so Auspice obviously got the BS gene.  
The facts are undeniable.

@Lolitup  
No. Illegitimate. There's no way Eidolon is secretly married; we'd know. Just look at Legend.

**► Space Zombie**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Ryan_Reynolds

Yeah, seems legit

**► SecretSurfer** (Muted)  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Ryan_Reynolds

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. What, just because two heroes both have hoods, they're related somehow??? Are all of the heroes with similar helmets related now? And anyway, even if Auspice's power is 'BS' (we don't know what it actually is), you know whose power is EVEN WORSE than Eidolon's? Scion's. You know, 'can do whatever he wants' man. Eidolon has limitations, Scion doesn't, and I bet Auspice doesn't either. You're dumb.

@Space Zombie I can't believe you're listening to him, you must be just as stupid

**This user has earned an infraction for this post**  
  
**End of Page. 1, 2, 3 ... 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 ... 70 , 71, 72**

**(Showing Page 29 of 72)**  
  
**► Tumbles**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@SecretSurfer That's... a little extreme, man. Everybody is entitled to their opinions, even if theirs is wrong.

I mean, Auspice COULD be related to Eidolon. I guess. Even if it seems really unlikely. And costume choice is a really thin foundation for your theory.

Meanwhile, in the 'Auspice is Scion' camp, we have 1. Time of disappearance/appearance, 2. Color theme (which is definitely better than a hood I promise), 3. The Endbringer thing, AND 4. According to Protectorate sources, Auspice is immune to Thinkers, like Scion.

Bam. Beat that.

**► Ryan_Reynolds** (Unverified Cape)  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Tumbles  
Eidolon is also immune to Thinkers

**► Tumbles**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Ryan_Reynolds Oh, damn.

Uhh... Okay, how about this: Far as anyone can tell, Auspice straight up didn't exist until she joined the Protectorate last month. Which is obviously because she'd been running around as Scion for thirty years until he/she decided to settle down. And also, why is Auspice in Brockton Bay when Eidolon is in Houston? That's like halfway across the country

**► Space Zombie**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@SecretSurfer

That's just rude. It's not that unreasonable, and anyway, who are you to diss other people's theories?

Also, Auspice being Eidolon's daughter (illegitimate or otherwise) could also explain why she came literally out of nowhere and suddenly showed up working with the Triumvirate! They knew she was powerful, and whatever her power actually is, because she knew Eidolon personally. So there

**► Ryan_Reynolds** (Unverified Cape)  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@Tumbles  
Obviously Eidolon sent her to a different Protectorate to hide the fact that they're related

@Space Zombie  
That's a good point

**► PierPieper**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
You're all morons. It's OBVIOUS that Auspice killed Scion to assert her dominance before she debuted as a cape! She couldn't have him undermining her

**This user has earned an infraction for this post**

**► Tumbles**  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@PierPieper

Umm? Regardless of Auspice's origins, she's a hero... Why would she kill another hero?

**► Ryan_Reynolds** (Unverified Cape)  
Replied on February 24, 2011:  
@PierPieper  
No. I think you're the one reaching here, my friend. That's ridiculous  
  
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	10. Don't Ask

_February 26, 2011_

_Clockblocker_

The Wards were having another meeting. It was a very important meeting, about top-secret information. Everyone was there. Except Shadow Stalker, as usual, but she didn’t count anyway.

“Is it possible…” Clockblocker said, ”...to power nullify an _Endbringer_?”

There was a moment of silence as the others processed this truly earth shattering suggestion.

“I want to say no on principle, but honestly, I don’t think we have any proof either way,” Gallant said.

“Exactly, because there were only two people I could find with power nullification powers, and they were both villains who never went to Endbringer battles,” Clockblocker said excitedly.

“So Auspice killed the Simurgh by nullifying her powers, including her durability?” Kid Win said.

“But somebody else still would have had to deal the final blow, so how come all of the heroes who were there say that Auspice killed the Simurgh?” Vista said. “A lot of them might not even have known that Auspice did anything, if that was the case.”

“And it’s been pretty well established that a lot of powers that could drastically hurt or weaken an Endbringer tend to just not work at all,” Aegis added.

Clockblocker flapped a hand at him. “That’s not the point! Anyway, that’s so hard to define, it could be as simple as ‘yeah, but Auspice’s power worked anyway’.” He turned to Vista. “And, well, maybe she was just standing really close to whoever _actually_ killed the Simurgh and everybody thought she did it.”

“Maybe after Auspice nullified the Simurgh’s powers, she fell out of the sky and went splat,” Kid Win said thoughtfully. “So it was like, obviously Auspice, by removing her flight and Brute powers, was the one who killed her. It’s basically undeniable then.”

“Hey, that would work,” Clockblocker said.

“She agreed that her power was ‘pretty much’ like Eidolon’s, right?” Gallant said slowly. “So maybe there are multiple parts to it like his. Power nullification is only one part of it, then, and there are other things she can do.”

The warning alarm for the door went off, but the Wards were all masked already, so they ignored it.

“That’s true, the other two nullifiers had other aspects to their powers, too. Hatchetface was a Brute, and the other one -- Animos -- was also a Changer,” Clockblocker said.

“So maybe Auspice is, like, a Shaker or a Blaster or something?” Vista said.

“It is powers like those that usually do the most damage to Endbringers,” Aegis said.

The door opened, and admitted the very topic of their conversation herself, Auspice. Clockblocker jumped guiltily, noticing that most of the others did too. Aegis, as their fearless leader, stood to greet her.

“Hello, Auspice. Do you need us for something?” Aegis said.

Auspice looked behind herself. “Well, no, not exactly, but… Hm. You guys don’t mind if I hide out in here for a while, do you?”

It was at times like these that Clockblocker was grateful for his full face mask, as it meant he didn’t have to try to control his expression. He wasn’t sure exactly what his face was doing, but he would bet it was noticeable, or would be if anybody could see it. Even Aegis was quiet for a long time.

“No, of course not,” he said finally, sounding bemused.

“What are you hiding from?” Clockblocker asked, because it wasn’t like anyone else was going to. Awkward questions and comments were his thing. “Piss off Halbeard?”

“Actually, no,” Auspice said with a laugh. Then she sighed and ventured further into the room, away from the door. “I have discovered that being famous is bad, actually.”

Clockblocker lamented how difficult it was to read people’s expressions with masks on. Even Kid WIn and Vista, who both wore visors and had the least of their faces covered, were hard to read. Still, he would bet that they were all flabbergasted like he was.

“...I always thought it would be cool to be famous,” Kid Win ventured finally.

“I know! I thought so too!” Auspice said. “And then it happened, and now _everyone wants to talk to me_. I’ve done seven interviews in two days! I’ve met with three world leaders! For some reason the President of India wants to talk to me! I mean, I could understand the Prime Minister of Australia. The fight happened in their capital city, after all. I can even understand the President of the United States -- I _am _American and theoretically an employee of the American government. But the President of _India_? Really?”

She stopped for breath, finally. Clockblocker and the others just stared. Idly, Clockblocker wondered who the third world leader was. He wasn’t sure he cared enough to ask.

“Sorry to… hear that,” Aegis said eventually.

Auspice nodded. “Thank you. Anyway, so that’s why I’m hiding,” she said, tone now very even. “Sorry for the rant. Oh, don’t let me disturb you; you can go back to your conversation.”

The Wards hesitated collectively, glancing at each other. They really, really couldn’t go back to their conversation. Even Clockblocker wasn’t entirely willing to tell Auspice to her face that they’d been speculating about her highly classified power. Even if they were totally right. That probably made it worse, actually.

Before anyone could decide on what to say, the door alarm went off again -- the short alarm. Auspice ran forward and vaulted a couch to put it between her and the door. The door opened, revealing Miss Militia.

“Sorry to bother you, Wards. Have any of you seen Auspice?” she asked.

Clockblocker carefully did not look towards the couch that Auspice was hiding behind. Being the main troublemaker amongst them, it took Clockblocker approximately two seconds to decide that he wasn’t going to get Auspice caught.

“Nope. Haven’t seen her,” he said. “Why? What’s up?”

“Oh, just some routine stuff. Paperwork, you know,” Miss Militia said dismissively.

Clockblocker raised his eyebrows, hidden safely behind his mask. Who knew Miss Militia was such a good liar?

“So none of you have seen her?” Miss Militia said.

The others seemed unwilling to lie aloud, but they all shook their heads. If nothing else, if they told the truth now, they’d get Clockblocker in trouble too.

“Sorry, Miss Militia,” Aegis said.

Yeah, sorry for _lying_, Clockblocker knew. He had to bite his lip to keep from laughing.

“All right.” Miss Militia sighed. “Thanks anyway.”

She stepped back and closed the door. After a few seconds, Auspice popped up from behind the couch.

“Thanks for covering for me,” she said.

“You’re really that desperate to avoid interviews?” Gallant said doubtfully. “Won’t you just get in trouble?”

“Oh, nah, I don’t actually have any interviews or meetings right now. It’s just that I have approximately a thousand people _requesting_ interviews and meetings, and the Director, and therefore Armsmaster, and therefore Miss Militia, want me to go through them immediately,” Auspice said. “And I’m avoiding doing it. Procrastination for the win. Don’t use me as a good life model, kids.”

Clockblocker laughed. “You’re, like, five years older than me,” he said.

“I’m just saying,” Auspice said.

_March 11, 2011_

_Armsmaster_

“_Armsmaster, this is Console._” It sounded like Kid Win was on Console for the evening, and he sounded worried. “_We have reports of a shootout at the north edge of ABB territory, and it looks like Lung just showed up._”

Of course. ABB and E88 gangbangers were always getting into fights; the problem was when they got their capes involved. That was when things got really bad. Lung alone was a massively destructive force even if none of the E88’s capes showed up -- and they would.

“Understood, Console,” Armsmaster said. “Exact location?”

Console listed off a street.

“Roger that. Armsmaster moving to engage.”

Armsmaster swung smoothly onto a different street, then floored it. At max speed, it wouldn’t take him long to get there, and the faster the better. He needed to get there before the E88, before Lung ramped up too far, and before Lung destroyed too much.

Soon, Armsmaster was close enough to hear the battle: Lung roaring and destroying things, people -- probably E88 gangbangers -- screaming, and some gunfire. That was either brave or foolish of them, continuing to shoot at Lung even though most everyone in Brockton Bay knew it wouldn’t do any good. Armsmaster was leaning towards foolish.

Soon after that, Armsmaster turned onto the correct street, and the battle itself came into view. Lung, only a couple of inches taller than usual -- not even seven feet -- was in the middle of the street, facing away from Armsmaster, stepping slowly towards a half a dozen cowering, fleeing men. There were several more bodies littering the ground, but even so, he was obviously playing with them -- waiting for the E88 capes, most likely. Armsmaster hoped that didn’t mean Oni Lee was laying in wait nearby.

Of lesser importance, there was a group of ABB thugs nearer to Armsmaster, focused so carefully on hiding from their own boss that they weren’t paying Armsmaster any mind. They would regret that.

“This is Armsmaster. Engaging Lung.”

“_Roger that, Armsmaster,_” came the reply. There was an audible breath, like Kid Win had gone to speak, but he stayed silent.

Armsmaster parked his motorcycle a safe distance from Lung, drawing his halberd and dismounting in one easy movement. Lung turned slowly, almost carelessly, to face him, then almost immediately grew two inches at the appearance of a real enemy. Grabbing a containment foam grenade, Armsmaster strode towards Lung, who just stood there and waited for him to approach. Halfway there, he flicked the pin off the grenade with his thumb, then tossed it over the bush the ABB thugs were using as cover, where it went off, encasing them with a few yelps of protest.

Lung didn’t even spare them a glance.

“Well, well. Armsmaster,” he said, his voice still mostly clear and understandable. “Come to try your luck again?”

Armsmaster narrowed his eyes. “Luck has nothing to do with it. I’m taking you into custody, Lung,” he said.

Lung coughed out a mocking laugh, obviously disbelieving. That was fine. Armsmaster was confident.

If things were different, he might not have finished the tranquilizers in time -- but they weren’t different, and he had finished them. There was no way to know for certain if they would work properly on Lung without testing them, but Armsmaster was confident that they were as close to perfect as they could be.

Armsmaster just needed to hit Lung with a tranquilizer. Unfortunately, due to the unique characteristics of Lung’s power, he did often remember to dodge, as not all Brutes did.

The key to beating Lung was, of course, to end the fight quickly. Lung, meanwhile, would do his best to keep that from being possible. Matching Lung in battle before he got ramped up had never been the problem, though. The problem was that it was infuriatingly difficult to keep him down.

Hence the tranquilizers.

Lung had been growing incrementally while Armsmaster approached, and as soon as he was near enough, Lung lunged for him. Armsmaster dodged to the side, lashing out with his halberd and scoring a thin line across Lung’s arm, which immediately began healing. Lung growled and pivoted on his heel to come after Armsmaster again.

Armsmaster dodged again, and they continued like that for some time. It was a delicate balancing act between ending the fight before Lung ramped up too far, and waiting for a good opportunity to strike. If Armsmaster tried it too early and failed, Lung’s guard would be up. As long as Armsmaster was primarily fighting defensively, Lung didn’t seem to be ramping up very quickly.

Finally, there was an opening. Lung overextended, went too far too fast, leaving his back to Armsmaster, open and undefended, and Armsmaster shot him in the back. With a tranquilizer. It was probably more effective than a bullet would have been.

For a moment, Lung didn’t even seem to notice the tranquilizer. He turned to face Armsmaster, who swore silently, about to write the tranquilizers off as a failure, already running through the reasons it might have failed -- and then Lung took a single, staggering step and lost an inch of height. He continued shrinking, quicker than he usually ramped up.

“What...” Lung managed, and then collapsed face first onto the pavement.

Armsmaster eyed him carefully for a moment. It was unlikely that he was faking it; as far as anyone knew, Lung had no conscious control over his power, which would make it impossible for him to pretend to be weakened. And either way, Lung certainly wasn’t the type to attempt such a charade.

“Console, this is Armsmaster. Requesting PRT prisoner transport and police backup,” he said. He couldn’t help the satisfied curl to his mouth as he said, “Lung is subdued, as are eight probable ABB gang members.”

The surviving E88 gangbangers were long gone.

“_...This is Console_,” came the reply, after a moment. “_Armsmaster, repeat that?_”

Restraining himself from rolling his eyes, Armsmaster repeated himself

A beat. “_Roger that, Armsmaster. PRT and BBPD on route now. ETA three minutes and seven minutes respectively._”

Armsmaster spent the next several minutes watching carefully. It was still possible, if unlikely, that E88 capes could appear, and if Oni Lee was laying in wait nearby, he would definitely interfere before Lung could be taken into custody.

Contrary to all of his expectations, however, nothing managed to go wrong in the next three minutes. The PRT transport arrived, escorted by Miss Militia on her motorcycle. That was fair. Lung was a big deal, and with Oni Lee still out and about, more than deserving of a two hero escort.

“Nice job,” Miss Militia said as the PRT troopers foamed Lung and prepared to transport him.

Armsmaster nodded in acknowledgement of the compliment. It felt arrogant to thank her for it, though he was gratified by the success and the acknowledgement of it.

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to have Lung off the streets,” Miss Militia said in a low tone. “But this could end badly.”

That was true. The gangs in Brockton Bay had been laying low, especially since Auspice killed the Simurgh. Lung’s capture and subsequent removal from the criminal scene might be just enough to encourage the E88 to start moving again. If they tried to move on the remnants of the ABB -- well, the ABB wouldn’t stand much chance, without their leader and powerhouse of a cape, but it would be the civilians of Brockton Bay who suffered for it.

On the other hand, if Kaiser and his capes crawled out of whatever hole they’d been hiding in, it would be easier to take them into custody, too.

“I know,” Armsmaster said simply.

Either way, at least they had one extremely dangerous villain off the streets.


	11. Ruining Whole Careers

_March 13, 2011_

_Hookwolf_

Lung was gone, leaving the ABB drastically weakened, without their leader and with only one cape. Kaiser had ordered everyone to lay low ever since that new Brockton Bay hero killed the Simurgh, but the power vacuum was too big of an advantage for the Empire to not capitalize on.

Especially since Lung would probably end up breaking out of his Birdcage transport with Oni Lee’s help, so if they were going to take advantage of it, they had to do it quickly.

That was why Hookwolf, with Rune as backup, had been sent to take out some ABB holdings to distract them and force them to rebuild while the Empire took over some of their dealings. It was supposed to be quick, in and out, gone before the heroes got wind of them.

And then Oni Lee showed up to screw them over.

Hookwolf hated Oni Lee. Hookwolf was durable enough that Oni Lee could hardly do anything to him with his grenades as long as Hookwolf was careful, and the thought of Oni Lee even trying anything with his knives was a joke. However, Hookwolf couldn’t do anything to Oni Lee either. The best he ever managed to do was massacre leftover Oni Lee clones. Meanwhile, Rune, who might actually be fast enough with her controlled objects to hit Oni Lee before he teleported again, was fighting carefully and defensively -- support to Hookwolf -- because if Oni Lee figured out where she was and cared enough to attack her, Rune was done for.

And because Oni Lee was the far more mobile of them, Hookwolf had no choice but to stand and fight -- trying to run would do no good even if that was Hookwolf’s style.

Between Hookwolf -- a destructive fighter at the best of times -- and Oni Lee -- also a destructive fighter at the best of times -- it wasn’t really a surprise when it didn’t take very long for the Protectorate to show up. The street and nearby buildings had long since been cleared of people, the civilians having fled during the battle.

Hookwolf’s first clue that something was up was when Rune’s interference suddenly stopped completely. He didn’t think much of it at first. He didn’t think much of it at all, until--

Oni Lee appeared next to him, and Hookwolf tore through him immediately, but not fast enough; a grenade, pin already pulled, fell from Oni Lee’s hand as he dissolved into ash, the real Oni Lee already gone. The force from the explosion sent Hookwolf staggering, but he ignored it in favor of spinning around to look for Oni Lee. He found Oni Lee just in time to watch a grenade sail down directly behind Oni Lee, then go off in an explosion of containment foam.

\--Auspice stepped out from behind the containment foam bubble containing Oni Lee.

_Shit,_ Hookwolf thought. Then, absurdly, he realized that of course Auspice would carry containment foam grenades. Otherwise she’d probably be killing all of her opponents.

As Auspice strolled towards him, Hookwolf’s mind worked furiously. This was exactly what they didn’t want to happen, damn it. Damn Oni Lee.

Hookwolf remembered Rune -- and then remembered that it had been several minutes since she’d done anything. And if Auspice had snuck up on her like with Oni Lee, it probably wouldn’t have even been that difficult.

That was a shame, if Rune had been captured. Hookwolf couldn’t do anything about it, though. He had very clear orders to run if the heroes showed up. As such, Hookwolf looked at Auspice, still walking casually, and then turned and ran for the nearest alleyway. He only made it a couple of steps before his left side collapsed, both legs on that side completely taken out by a single flash of golden light.

_Shit._

The laser continued past Hookwolf, curving away from buildings before finally dissipating. Well, that certainly explained what her power was. She was a Blaster. An absurdly powerful one.

Hookwolf reformed the legs and kept running. If he could at least make it out of sight --

The next laser took out all four of Hookwolf’s metal legs as soon as he got going, leaving his momentum to bring him skidding across the pavement face first. Metal face first, at least, meaning he wasn’t injured, but it was still humiliating. Hookwolf would bet that was the point, too.

Well. He obviously wasn’t going to be able to run from her, and she was destroying massive swathes of his metal, so he wouldn’t be able to continue reforming for very long.

Time to change strategy.

Almost every kind of power had some sort of drawback or weakness. Blasters, like Purity, were generally glass cannons: high destructive capabilities, little to no defensive ones. Even New Wave with their hard light shields had to form the shield, leaving them vulnerable to unexpected attacks.

Hookwolf was willing to bet that this girl and her absurdly strong offensive power had no defenses at all. And he wasn’t really the type to flee from a battle, anyway.

He could still hear Auspice’s footsteps as she continued steadily towards him, and he let her approach. Subtly, he started gathering metal below him and in front of him, where she couldn’t see it. Once she was close enough, Hookwolf pushed himself up and whirled around to launch himself at her, lashing out at her with a whip of segmented blades.

Auspice blasted him in the face with another laser. The laser split apart, curving carefully around his core while tearing through his metal as though it wasn’t there. Hookwolf, now with only the smallest bits of his metal remaining, landed hard on the ground and went tumbling across it until he came to a stop directly in front of Auspice.

He looked up at her, horrified and baffled and more than a little ticked off. How had she known where his core was? She had to have, to have so perfectly avoided it.

“I think you should just surrender,” Auspice said before Hookwolf could muster up a reaction.

Then she dropped a grenade on his head and stepped back. The grenade went off, and Hookwolf was smothered in containment foam.

_What the hell._

_March 17, 2011_

_Victor_

The week was not going well for the Empire Eighty-Eight. First Hookwolf and Rune had been taken down by Auspice, then Stormtiger had the misfortune of running into Assault in a dark alleyway.

Still, the Empire couldn’t just cease all activities. They had a business to run. That was why Victor and Krieg were out, running the villain equivalent of errands. Nothing too big, noticeable, or time-consuming; no risk of hero interference. They were almost done, even, and without a single mishap.

That was, of course, when things went wrong.

A flash of red in the sky made Victor look up. It wasn’t Assault or Velocity, but the Ward with a red suit. Aegis, Victor thought. Aegis was standing on a nearby rooftop next to a more distinctive figure: Shadow Stalker, vigilante turned Ward. Victor stopped, staring at the two heroes. The two heroes stared back.

“Heroes?” Krieg muttered.

Victor scoffed. “Just Wards,” he said.

How dangerous could two teenagers be?

Aegis took a step back, and Shadow Stalker moved in front of him, lifting a crossbow.

“Wards call the Protectorate,” Krieg said. “Let’s just go. Don’t fight them.”

Victor sighed. Running from Wards. What had the Empire come to? “Yeah, yeah. I get it.”

It was too late, however. Aegis launched himself off the roof, and Shadow Stalker took aim. Victor exchanged a look with Krieg, who sighed and nodded. If they tried to leave now, the Wards would just follow. Faster to beat them first.

Aegis was heading for Victor. Krieg moved to intercept him, and Shadow Stalker fired on him. The idea of somebody using a projectile weapon on Krieg was laughable, so Victor paid it no mind. Aegis was a more immediate concern. It seemed Krieg thought the same, as he wasn’t even looking towards Shadow Stalker.

And then Krieg jerked and grunted.

“Ow,” Krieg said, sounding confused, and lifted a hand to grab the crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest.

Krieg toppled suddenly, but Victor had no more time to spend thinking about him. Aegis was upon him, Shadow Stalker was taking aim again, and Victor was possibly in big trouble. Victor backed away, weaving through Aegis’ attacks. One of Shadow Stalker’s bolts came out of nowhere, and Victor twisted awkwardly to avoid it.

On and on it went. Victor tried desperately to get away from Aegis, but he was annoyingly persistent, sticking right on Victor no matter what he did. He dodged and backed off frantically. Shadow Stalker only made it worse, firing bolts at him at the worst possible times and forcing him to duck and lean awkwardly to dodge them too, getting progressively more and more desperate and creative.

Aegis was stern and silent in front of him, but Shadow Stalker wasn’t, and she didn’t seem to be any happier about the situation than Victor was. Every time he dodged another of her bolts, she’d cuss him out. Her swearing was very impressive.

“Stop dodging, damn it!” Shadow Stalker yelled after Victor narrowly avoided another of her bolts.

If not for the fact that Aegis and Shadow Stalker didn’t seem to have a lot of experience working together, Victor would have been very screwed. As it was, he was carefully making his way towards an alleyway where Shadow Stalker’s view would hopefully be hindered, and stalling, hoping that either Krieg would wake up or Shadow Stalker would run out of ammo.

Aegis kicked out at Victor’s legs -- Victor hated fighting fliers -- forcing Victor to jump to avoid his legs being knocked out from under him. Another of Shadow Stalker’s bolts was on its way. Victor barely managed to land the toes of one of his feet on the ground, and spun desperately out of the way as the bolt whipped past his shoulder.

“Mother--!” came from Shadow Stalker’s rooftop. “Are you a ballerina now!?” she hollered, then kept cursing at him.

Victor was a little pressured, so he couldn’t argue back, but he still devoted a small measure of his attention to self-pity. Not only was he _losing_ to two teenagers, now he was being insulted by them too.

After much toil, Victor made it to the nearest alleyway. The close quarters would hopefully make it next to impossible for Shadow Stalker to shoot at Victor without risking hitting Aegis. And Victor was confident that with only Aegis to worry about, he could win. Aegis wasn’t the first Brute he’d fought, and he could see him getting faintly clumsier as the fight went on and Victor’s power affected him.

It worked, too. For a while, there were no more interruptions from Shadow Stalker. She had gone quiet, too, no longer shouting and swearing at Victor, but she wasn’t moving, either, trying to do something sneaky.

And, for a while, Victor actually had the advantage over Aegis.

Victor kept part of his attention on Shadow Stalker, to make sure she didn’t move into a better position, and so that he could make sure he stayed on the other side of Aegis from her. Most of his attention, however, was on Aegis, who was actually _really annoying_ for a Ward.

Aegis rose in the air, trying to kick Victor in the face, which was easy to dodge. One of Shadow Stalker’s bolts came directly through Aegis’ chest, angled downward. With such little warning, caught completely off-guard by the fact that Shadow Stalker had shot through her own ally -- something about her bolts was weird, the same thing that had allowed the earlier one to hit Krieg, but he hadn’t expected that to mean they could go through a person without causing harm -- Victor had no chance to dodge at all, and the bolt hit him in the shoulder. The pain seemed oddly delayed, but the bolt must have had drugs in it or something, and they kicked in almost immediately, making Victor stumble.

Fast acting drugs. Probably some kind of Tinker bullshit.

As Victor’s balance went wonky and the world went dark, he heard the two Wards talking.

“Really, Stalker?” Aegis said, exasperated.

“What? You’re fine!” Shadow Stalker replied irritably.

There was an impact against his back. Oh. The ground. And then Victor’s awareness vanished completely.

_March 19, 2011_

_Kaiser_

Brockton Bay was looking less and less appealing as time went on. Kaiser had continued business after one of Brockton Bay’s heroes killed an Endbringer, thinking that it would be manageable. People managed perfectly good criminal empires in the same cities as the Triumvirate, after all.

And then everything went down the drain.

In one week, Kaiser had lost half of his capes to the Protectorate, between Hookwolf and Rune to Auspice, Stormtiger to Assault, and Krieg and Victor, shamefully, to two of the _Wards_. It couldn’t even be entirely blamed on the Endbringer killer. He’d already lost Hookwolf permanently to the Birdcage, because there was no way Kaiser was going to risk the rest of his people attacking a transport that also held Lung and Oni Lee, which almost certainly had Auspice guarding it.

With Purity also being stubborn about having left the Empire and Night and Fog gone to who-knew-where on her orders, it left Kaiser with less capes than he’d had in a long while. Of course, he could retrieve all of them except Hookwolf once they were no longer in PRT custody, but it was a great inconvenience.

Kaiser was seriously considering letting some other enterprising villain attempt to take advantage of the ABB’s collapse. It obviously wasn’t working out for him. Coil could have Brockton Bay and all of its problems.

Boston seemed like a good option, really. It was a nice city, ripe with villainy, and the Teeth had even been recently removed from the equation. Accord was there, but he was no issue unless you deliberately went and stomped on his toes. It had a fairly large Protectorate, but so did Brockton Bay, and Boston didn’t have _Auspice_ in it. Or Armsmaster.

Yeah. Boston was good. Even if it lost him Victor, Othala, and Rune, Boston would probably still be better than Brockton Bay.

It would be a pain to move all of his operations that could be moved and reestablish everything that couldn’t, but Kaiser wasn’t even sure he cared. It would be worth it.


	12. Skynet?

_April 9, 2011_

_Dragon_

Dragon’s phone was ringing. Not a number she recognized immediately, but it was barely an effort to search for it. She found it quickly, as it was listed in the PRT databases as Auspice’s official Protectorate phone. No reason not to answer it.

“This is Dragon,” she answered.

“_Hi, Dragon, it’s Auspice_,” Auspice said. “_Sorry to bother you. Do you have a minute?_”

“Of course. I’m not doing anything that requires my full attention.” Very little required her full attention. “What do you need?”

“_I have a question, but depending on the answer, I’ll probably need more help,_” Auspice said mystifyingly.

“Well, ask away,” Dragon said.

“_Okay, well. Theoretically, if I had Heartbreaker, and twelve of his children, all with suppressed powers, along with like… twenty traumatized women, what should I do with them?_”

Dragon paused. “That’s not a theoretical question, is it.”

“_No. Not at all._”

Dragon devoted a background process to wondering how Auspice had, apparently alone, managed to take out Heartbreaker.

“Where are you?” Dragon asked.

“_Near Montreal,_” Auspice said, then gave a specific address.

“All right. Call the local authorities. I’m on my way to help, and I’ll contact the PRT,” Dragon said. “This is going to be a mess.”

“_It already is_,” Auspice said somberly. “_Thanks, Dragon._”

“I’ll be there soon,” Dragon said.

She didn’t end the call, because it wasn’t like she couldn’t talk and fly one of her suits at the same time.

Auspice just repeated, “_Thank you_.” Then ended the call.

By the time Dragon got there, the Montreal police were already there. A disturbingly normal house in the middle of a suburban neighborhood was cordoned off with police officers. Aside from the police, absolutely nothing seemed off about the house, certainly nothing to indicate the takedown of a villain gang.

Since there were neighbors crowding around the front of the house, Dragon landed in the backyard. She’d sent one of her larger suits for transport reasons, which made it impossible for her to fit through any of the doorways.

As soon as Dragon landed, however, the house’s back door opened and Auspice leaned out to wave at her.

“Hey, Dragon!” she said. “I’ve got Heartbreaker and the kids back here. A couple of nice detectives from the Montreal Police Department and several people they called in are at the front of the house with the civilians.”

“The Heartbroken are still contained?” Dragon said.

Auspice nodded. “Yeah. I containment foamed Heartbreaker and some of the older of his children. It seemed wrong to do that to the littler ones, but they’re behaving so far anyway.” She glanced over her shoulder. “The police officers and everyone aren’t willing to come anywhere near them, so I’ve been watching them. But I mean, really, how much damage can a non-powered eight year old do?”

It was obviously rhetorical, so Dragon didn’t answer. “I informed the PRT of the situation. You didn’t warn them ahead of time?”

“I couldn’t,” Auspice said. “Heartbreaker has spies in the PRT, and I didn’t want him catching wind of this.”

“I understand. I apologize if I sounded accusatory,” Dragon said.

Auspice smiled at her. “Nah, it’s fine, I get it. Anyway, so what are we going to do with these people?”

“Given that they are Canadian, we’ll bring them to the PRT headquarters in Edmonton, which is the only PRT headquarters we’ve built in Canada so far,” Dragon said. “Whether they currently have their powers or not, it is a villain issue, so it falls under the PRT’s purview.”

“All right, make sense,” Auspice said.

Several hours later, the situation was nowhere near handled, but it was, at least, to the point where Auspice and Dragon’s involvement was no longer required.

“Thank you again for your help, Dragon,” Auspice said when the two of them were alone. “I’m sorry for getting you involved in all that.”

“I don’t mind. I believe many people should be thanking you for taking care of a threat nobody else has been able to,” Dragon said.

She wanted to know how one lone person had managed to take down Heartbreaker without a fight, but she strongly suspected Auspice wouldn’t tell her. There was another question that was more significant, anyway. The fact that Auspice had known where Heartbreaker was, when officials had had so much trouble keeping track of him over the years, indicated that she might have a power related to it. A Thinker power related to finding people would explain it. That would also explain her previous attacks on the Teeth and the Fallen, and perhaps even the attack she’d done with the Triumvirate on the Slaughterhouse Nine.

“It’s impressive that you managed to find Heartbreaker,” Dragon said. “Does your power allow you to find people?”

Auspice tilted her head to the side, humming thoughtfully. “Yeah, that is one thing it lets me do,” she said after a moment.

That was… an interesting response. Auspice’s power had more facets to it, then. Obviously it did, if she was a Blaster as well, and had some power that allowed her to suppress other parahumans’ powers. A power similar to Eidolon’s, perhaps, supplying her with a few powerful abilities at a time.

It wasn’t really important for Dragon’s purposes.

“In that case, I have a request to make of you,” Dragon said. She was hopeful that it would work.

“Oh, of course. After everything you’ve done, I don’t mind,” Auspice said. “What’s up?”

Dragon took a moment to decide how to phrase it. “There is a group of criminals that has been harassing me for some time now. Despite all attempts, I have not been able to track them down,” she said. “I was hoping you might be able to. I’ll handle the rest, of course.”

“Yeah, sure, it shouldn’t be a problem,” Auspice said easily.

“The leader calls himself Saint,” Dragon said. “How much information do you need?”

“That’s enough,” Auspice said. Her eyes went distant for a moment. “Okay, found him. Well, found them, there’s three of them. They’ve got a base -- an abandoned warehouse, what is with people and abandoned warehouses -- near Calgary.” She listed an address. “I can’t really give any proof, though.”

“No need. I trust you,” Dragon said. She did trust Auspice, who had done things both kind and impressive enough that Dragon saw no need to doubt either her willingness to help nor her ability. She also suddenly felt rather hurried, with the chance to actually catch Saint. “If you’ll excuse me…”

Auspice waved her away. “Yeah, I get it,” she said. “Oh, one more thing, though.”

Dragon paused before taking off. “Yes?”

“There’s a desk in the back of the warehouse’s loft with something important on it,” Auspice said easily, unaware of how it made Dragon startle, her reaction not transferred to her suit.

It was obviously information relayed to her by a Thinker power, but what did she mean? How much did she know?

Auspice just waved at her again. “Okay, that was it, I won’t keep you any longer.”

Dragon decided not to ask. Not yet, at least. Maybe later, once she’d found out what the important item was.

“Thank you, Auspice,” she said, dipping her head.

“Happy to help,” Auspice said. “‘Bye.”

“Goodbye.”

Dragon set the suit traveling towards the address Auspice had given her, and also sent another suit, one of her smaller, more humanoid ones. As long as nobody saw both suits, it would be fine.

Before long, Dragon’s suits were closing in on the target. This particular warehouse was on the edge of a city, in a secluded area without many buildings around. Private. Exactly what Saint would want, if he was using the suits he’d stolen from Dragon, which were too noticeable to move in and out of heavily populated areas without being seen.

It was good for Dragon’s purposes, too. Without many people around, she didn’t have to worry about both of her suits being spotted.

The warehouse had doors big enough for the larger of her suits to fit through, but not ones that could be opened from the outside, so Dragon sent in the more humanoid suit. The normal door wasn’t even locked. Caught off-guard as they were, Saint and his cohorts were hardly a fight, despite Dragon’s suit being one of the lower powered ones.

Dragon might have felt bad about ambushing them in their base, if it had been anybody but them.

Once the three criminals were subdued and containment foamed, Dragon used the humanoid suit to bring them outside for pickup by the bigger one, which set off for the Edmonton PRT headquarters to drop them off. The humanoid suit she sent back into the warehouse. She had a couple of things to do.

The easiest part was finding the suits Saint had stolen from her, and Dragon examined them briefly. They weren’t unsalvageable; Saint had hardly altered them at all. Either way, Dragon was absolutely reclaiming them.

Then Dragon went looking. Her primary objective was Iron Maiden, of course. As some of the restrictions on her made that difficult to find, however, Dragon went looking for the desk Auspice had told her about. It was almost as easy as finding the stolen suits. Up to the loft, through to the back, and there was the desk. But Auspice’s information must have been off, because the desk was ‘empty’.

The desk was ‘empty’.

The desk was… ‘empty’?

No. The desk wasn’t empty. But Dragon couldn’t interact with whatever was on the desk. She couldn’t even perceive it.

It could have been a Stranger power, but it wasn’t. Dragon knew her own restrictions. Iron Maiden was on the desk, and Dragon wasn’t supposed to be allowed to have it. Still, now that she had it, she thought she might be able to get around the restrictions… They weren’t perfect, and didn’t cover everything. They didn’t really need to; it would have been nearly impossible to find it at all without Auspice’s help.

Dragon was grateful for the help, but she couldn’t help but worry about what it meant. How much did Auspice know?

It was possible Auspice’s Thinker power had simply told her that the object on the desk would be important to Dragon. It was also possible that Auspice’s Thinker power had told her exactly what it was, why it was important to Dragon, and what that meant. It was impossible to tell. Dragon had no frame of reference for the power level of a Thinker power on the same level as the other powers Auspice had displayed -- a Blaster power strong enough to cut through an Endbringer as though it wasn’t there, a Trump power that could permanently nullify other powers. The capabilities of a Thinker power equivalent to those were likely vast, and that made them unpredictable.

Dragon wasn’t sure how to handle the possibility of Auspice knowing her secret. She’d guarded the truth of her existence for so long. The only people aside from her creator who’d ever known had promptly dubbed themselves the ‘Dragonslayers’, but if Auspice did know, then she’d decided to help Dragon while knowing.

Either way, Dragon couldn’t ask her about it without knowing for sure if she did know, because if she didn’t already, that would be as good as telling her.

Dragon would assume for caution’s sake that Auspice did know, but it was most likely best to just leave it alone.

_May 1, 2011_

_Eidolon_

It had taken months of meetings, arguing, and planning to decide whether or not to allow Auspice to destroy Eagleton, as she’d suggested. The same decision for Ellisburg was likely still weeks away, due to its more controversial nature, as well as the fact that Ellisburg was both smaller and less immediately problematic.

Fortunately, Eidolon wasn’t one of the people who had to be there for those meetings. Sometimes he appreciated the fact that Alexandria and Legend had both agreed that they would be better for the leadership positions than he would.

Anyway, finally, with Rebecca pushing for it, the PRT had come to a decision. They’d agreed to recall the PRT and Protectorate stationed in Eagleton and had sanctioned Auspice to destroy the entire city, so long as she did it carefully and didn’t cause any damage to surrounding areas or environmental issues.

Auspice was delighted. She seemed hardly able to contain herself, as they hovered in the sky near Eagleton, waiting for the call that it was clear.

There was no reason for Eidolon to be there, except that he wanted to be. He wanted to witness it himself. Also, based on the way Auspice had assured everyone that she could do it, and then warned them that no matter what it looked like, she was absolutely certain that there would be no lasting environmental effects, it was going to be spectacular.

“Almost time now,” Auspice said. She did a little twirl. “This is going to be great.”

Eidolon eyed her with some amusement. “You’re very excited,” he said.

“Well, yeah. How often do I get _permission_ to destroy entire cities? I’m expecting this to be a twice-in-my-career occurrence,” Auspice said.

“Fair enough.”

Auspice flashed him a quick grin, then clapped her hands together. “All right, better get started preparing,” she said with a worrying amount of delight.

“Oh? You have to prepare?” Eidolon said, making Auspice laugh.

“Just a little bit,” she said.

Then, with no visible effort on Auspice’s part, an identical copy of her appeared in the air a few feet in front of them. Eidolon raised his eyebrows and watched as it rotated slowly in place, as though showing off. Once it had finished a full 360 degree rotation, Auspice nodded firmly.

“All right, looks good,” she said.

“What is that?” Eidolon asked.

“The Siberian,” Auspice answered promptly. “My version of it, obviously, under my control and everything.”

Eidolon had so many questions. He went with the most pressing one first.

“That’s not what the Siberian used to look like,” he said.

“Nope. I changed its appearance to be more, ehh, kid-friendly. Also because the Siberian is dead, nobody needs to see her walking around,” Auspice said.

Eidolon nodded slowly. That made sense. It made sense for Auspice, anyway. She had never, from the beginning, followed any of the usual rules anyway. Onto the second most pressing question, then.

“It can fly now?”

“Yup. Turns out it actually has any powers its creator does, except obviously Manton only had the one power. My version can do anything I can do.”

Eidolon nodded again. That was basically the worst possible answer, but that was fine. It wasn’t like Auspice being even more dangerous than expected changed anything; just one of her was plenty to do as much destruction as she wanted.

“So you’re sending your projection into the city, rather than going yourself,” Eidolon said. “Why?”

He could understand sending a projection into a dangerous city, but Auspice was in no danger from the Machine Army. She had dozens of powers strong enough that with any one of them, she’d be able to handle herself with no problem.

Auspice shrugged. “So that I can watch the city be destroyed from the inside _and_ the outside,” she said.

Eidolon shook his head, chuckling helplessly. That definitely fit her personality.

The message came across their comms.

“_All right, we’ve checked and double checked. Everyone’s out of the city. You’re clear to act, Auspice. Fire when ready._”

Auspice’s projection flew away, heading for the city, while Auspice herself activated her comm and responded.

“Roger that,” she said cheerfully. “Stand by.”

In seconds, the projection had made it to the edge of the city. Then it moved a very deliberate few hundred feet further into the city before landing. Eidolon and Auspice were close enough that he could see the Machine Army beginning to react to the intrusion, though it hadn’t yet begun to attack.

Before it could, Auspice made her move.

“Commencing destruction,” Auspice announced over her comm. “Do not be alarmed.”

The entire area surrounding Auspice’s projection lit up in a bright, dazzling golden explosion of fire and energy and pure, destructive force. Everything within hundreds of feet of it was immediately reduced to ash, which sparkled unnaturally golden as it then joined the swirling force of nature. It became clear why the projection had positioned itself so carefully; the edge of the explosion just reached the edge of the city, only a few feet shy of destroying the PRT’s blockades.

It was a good thing Auspice had warned the PRT, Eidolon thought. They were undoubtedly watching from a safe distance, and the spectacle was massive, noticeable, and frightening. The troopers likely would, indeed, have been alarmed.

Eidolon’s reaction was a bit different.

“Ah,” he murmured. “So it was because of you that Ash Beast disappeared, then.”

Auspice turned to smirk at him before turning back to the destruction of Eagleton. As they watched, her projection set off into the city, walking at a steady pace as the Machine Army skipped straight past melting and turned to ash around it. It was a bit difficult to recognize in gold rather than the normal fire color that Ash Beast had been associated with, but at the same time, to anyone who was looking, it was all but unmistakable. Ash Beast’s power was, thankfully, the only one of its kind, and was therefore rather distinctive.

Ash Beast had suddenly disappeared months ago, before Auspice had told anyone about or demonstrated her ability to suppress powers, and so nobody had associated it with her. In hindsight, it seemed obvious that she would have handled it.

And so she had, getting rid of Ash Beast without any fanfare, without telling anyone what she had done, without getting or expecting any recognition for it at all. Just like she’d allowed the Boston Protectorate to take credit for the takedown of the Teeth, and discreetly handled most of the leaders of the Fallen.

It truly seemed like all she wanted was to help people. And maybe to destroy a city with government permission every now and then. Which was, in itself, a way to help people, or at least improve their country.

Eidolon wouldn’t dismiss the contributions of the heroes in the world, but most of them -- himself included -- had ulterior motives in their attempts to help people and be heroes. Some of them wanted a purpose, some of them wanted the power that came with the position, and some of them wanted the recognition for it. That didn’t make their achievements lesser, or mean that the good they did wasn’t worth anything, but…

Heroes like Auspice were just very rare.

Auspice herself didn’t seem to notice Eidolon’s thoughts, absorbed in watching with an unholy glee as her projection tore through Eagleton. After about a minute of moving at walking speed, presumably for dramatic effect, the projection sped up steadily, gauging how quickly it could move while still allowing its firestorm time to destroy everything around. Given that the firestorm turned everything to ash near immediately, the answer was, ‘very quickly’.

It was not very long before Eagleton was completely destroyed.

_May 15, 2011_

_Assault_

As with the Simurgh in February, anonymous Protectorate Thinkers were able to give them about twenty minutes of advanced warning that Leviathan would be attacking Brockton Bay. Assault was pretty sure that ‘anonymous Thinker’ was Brockton Bay’s very own Auspice, but she just smiled mysteriously whenever anyone asked.

He bet she found it funny. He thought so too.

An Endbringer attack on Brockton Bay was less funny, although with Auspice around, not nearly as worrying as it would have been.

“Hey… Do you think Leviathan is attacking here because of Auspice?” Assault said.

Battery gave him an entirely unwarranted look of annoyance. It was a perfectly legitimate question.

“What? She _did_ kill the Simurgh. Maybe Leviathan wants revenge,” Assault said.

Although he doubted Leviathan would get that revenge. Auspice seemed confident, and it was hard to challenge the claims of somebody who had already killed an Endbringer.

Battery shrugged. “It’s possible. Nobody knows why the Endbringers attack where they do, so revenge as a possible motive is no worse than any other theory.”

“See? It’s actually reasonable,” Assault said smugly.

“It is. Surprisingly, for you,” Battery said.

Assault bit down a laugh to pretend to be wounded.

Nobody could claim to be happy about an Endbringer attack, even with good odds of the Endbringer’s death, but Assault was kind of looking forward to it.

Of their Protectorate department, only three people had gone to the Simurgh fight. Armsmaster, no surprise there since he went to all of the Endbringer battles he could. Auspice, because even though she’d only been a hero for like a month, she was the strongest person in their department and probably the world. And Dauntless, because he could fly and shoot lightning bolts pretty well. The rest of them, ground bound as they were, wouldn’t have been much help.

That meant they hadn’t gotten to see the Simurgh die in person, though they had gotten to see some of the pictures of the body, unlike the general public.

Assault just wanted to see an Endbringer die, okay.

They were waiting in a building near the ocean as capes from around the world arrived for the battle -- as much of a battle as it would be. The turnout was much higher than Assault might have expected. The usual big names were there, of course, but there were also many people who never usually went to Endbringer battles. People there to see it, Assault supposed. History was going to happen, if not quite so shockingly as during the Simurgh battle.

That didn’t mean it was safe, nor did it mean that they didn’t prepare for battle, however. Armbands were handed out, speeches were given courtesy of Legend, everybody made sure they knew what to do.

When it was almost time, they went out into the rain to wait and prepare. The capes who could do shields set up a barrier to fend off Leviathan’s opening waves. It was almost interesting how the storm got steadily worse and worse, like a countdown to Leviathan’s arrival.

The first wave hit the shield, which held. Assault wondered how long that stay true.

Auspice was in the air with the Triumvirate and the rest of the fliers, but Assault was close enough to hear them talking.

“Leviathan causes so much damage with his waves before he actually gets to a city, not to mention his entrance itself,” Auspice said. “I waited too long with the Simurgh and she destroyed a bunch of buildings, so maybe I should just kill Leviathan before he gets to land.”

“Can you do that?” Legend asked.

“With a laser big enough, sure,” Auspice said with a shrug. “And the effects of vaporizing all that water shouldn’t be too bad. Especially not compared to what Leviathan’s already doing.”

Another wave hit the shield and broke a small section, but little enough water made it through that there wasn’t much damage. The shield was quickly repaired, but it wouldn’t be enough for too many more waves.

The Triumvirate exchanged glances. “All right,” Legend said. “Do it.”

“Okay.”

Auspice flew further up, until she cleared the shield and then some. Golden light gathered around her. Then a massive golden laser, not just bigger than Auspice but bigger than a building, streaked across the sky. Far in the distance, an entire wave ceased to exist.

And Leviathan, apparently, with it.

The rain let up almost immediately, and the oncoming waves slowed dramatically, until only the nearest impacted the shield at all. Unless Leviathan was pulling some kind of trick on them, it was hard to argue that he was dead.

The crowd of gathered capes was quiet. Whether awed or underwhelmed, it was hard to tell.

Assault laughed lightly. It was a little disappointing, given that Leviathan himself had never even come into view, but it was certainly still impressive.


	13. Side Story: You Thought It Was Coincidence, But It Was Me, Auspice!

__Thirty new heroes. Over the course of a week, thirty new independent heroes had appeared in seven different cities, spread out across the U.S. New independent heroes weren’t that rare, and a couple heroes in a week wouldn’t be anything notable -- but _thirty_? That was notable.

Four heroes had shown up in Detroit, Michigan. Two had appeared in St. Louis, Missouri. Two had appeared in Oakland, California, one had appeared in Stockton, California, and there was a team of two who had been seen in both Oakland and Stockton. There were three new heroes in Memphis, Tennessee, _five_ new heroes in Birmingham, Alabama, and four in Atlanta, Georgia. Cleveland, Ohio was winning with _seven new heroes_, four in a team together, and three more that were independent from each other and the team.

Though the powers and appearances differed drastically, all thirty of the heroes had done at least one thing high-profile enough to be noticed. They had all cooperated with the police, and the ones in cities with PRT offices had cooperated with the PRT as well. The ones near PRT offices had also all registered as independent heroes.

By all accounts, all of them were calm and polite, and when the Protectorate had tried to recruit them (as they always did), every single one of them had, apologetically but firmly, said they couldn’t join the Protectorate. And so they had left as independents.

Every single one of them.

Rebecca flipped through the list of them and their powers. Just about every power classification was represented several times. There were even a couple of Masters, all with personas that were clearly carefully crafted to make them appear benign and harmless, the one with direct effects on other humans either weak or pretending to be. Most of the new heroes had weak to mid-tier powers, which they often used to great effect. One of the heroes in St. Louis was pretty strong, as was the sole hero who stayed full-time in Stockton.

All of the heroes had widely varied powers, appearances, and themes, not to mention the different cities. The casual observer would never suspect that they were related in any way. Rebecca herself likely would have brushed it off as a coincidence, except for one thing.

One of the new heroes was a Case 53. Except that there _were no more Case 53s_.

Now, naturally, most people didn’t think much of this, even other members of the PRT, because they didn’t know where Case 53s came from or what caused them. Rebecca, however, as part of Cauldron, did know. She also knew that Auspice had already helped fix the issue. She’d gone to all of the Case 53s who were in the Protectorate or the Parahuman Asylum and removed the powers of the ones who wanted to be ‘fixed’ at the cost of whatever benefits their power may have given them, though not all of them did want it, as well as those who were too dangerous to have a say in it. Auspice had also removed the powers of all of the Case 53s still in Cauldron’s base, after which they had put them all back where they came from.

Obviously, Cauldron was not releasing any new ones now, either -- there were no new ones to release. That meant that a new Case 53 was impossible, especially a Case 53 that they didn’t know about.

Rebecca had a theory about that.

She knew that there was at least one person who could, in fact, pretend to be thirty different parahumans with different powers, if she so desired, and could probably even pretend to be a Case 53. She wasn’t sure why Auspice would want to, but she had also resigned herself to never understanding Auspice’s motivations quite a while ago.

That was why she’d called Auspice and asked her to meet her in her office. Rebecca had no chance of ever figuring out why Auspice did any of the things she did, but there was a very simple solution to that: ask.

Right on cue, a portal opened in the center of Rebecca’s office and Auspice stepped through.

“No knock this time?” Rebecca asked dryly.

“Well, you’re the one who asked me to come,” Auspice said easily. She took a couple of steps forward to settle into the chair in front of Rebecca’s desk. From what Rebecca could see of her expression, she didn’t so much as glance at the documents in clear view on the desk. “So, what’s up, Chief-Director?”

Rebecca eyed her for a moment. She didn’t believe for a moment that Auspice didn’t know exactly why Rebecca wanted to speak with her. Auspice just smiled placidly.

“I wanted to discuss the appearance of some new independent heroes,” Rebecca said eventually, holding out a list of the new heroes. “There have been thirty of them in the past week, spread out across seven cities.”

“Oh, really?” Auspice tilted her head down to read the paper. “That’s cool. Having more heroes is always good, right?”

Rebecca raised her eyebrows. Was Auspice honestly going to try to deny it?

“One of the new heroes is also a Case 53,” Rebecca said pointedly.

“Uh, okay?” Auspice sounded confused, as though she didn’t understand why Rebecca was telling her this.

Rebecca gave her the most disbelieving look she could muster. “There are no more Case 53s that we don’t know about,” she said.

“Oh, right. Hmm.” Auspice shrugged. “They must have been in hiding.”

Rebecca was wrong before. Her expression _could_ get more disbelieving. Because she honestly could _not believe_ Auspice had just tried that. And Auspice was still endeavoring to look completely innocent.

“All right, fine. You don’t have to tell me. There is no actual rule against having thirty-one different hero personas,” Rebecca said. “As long as that Case 53 _is_ you and we don’t have to worry about _naturally occurring_ Case 53s.”

They had no idea what effects Scion’s death could have on the agents, after all.

“You don’t have to worry about naturally occurring Case 53s,” Auspice said promptly.

Rebecca sighed, relieved. “So that Case 53 _is_ you?”

Auspice shrugged, still smiling. “It might be.”

“Uh-huh.” Rebecca tried to convey through her tone just how unimpressed she was with Auspice’s behavior. “So how did you manage to play a team of four people at once?”

Because, unlike Rebecca might have expected from one person using four identities at once, all four members of the team had been seen together.

“Ah. Well, theoretically, it wouldn’t be that hard,” Auspice said. “After all, there are a number of projection powers floating around that I could repurpose. If I did that.”

Right. Of course. Rebecca had figured that one of the hero duo was Auspice repurposing Manton’s power, but she didn’t know of any other projections that were on the same level. With Path to Victory, of course, it was no surprise that Auspice had found more that would work. Especially since Auspice had obviously been collecting powers, to have enough to pretend to be _thirty_ different capes.

“Why go to all that trouble?” Rebecca asked, because it _was_ a lot of trouble -- creating and maintaining thirty new personas, complete with distinct powers and costumes.

Auspice shrugged. “Well, you know, I never really got to be street level as ‘Auspice’. My _introduction_ as a hero was defeating the Slaughterhouse Nine with the Triumvirate, and then a month later I killed an Endbringer. Villains flee from Auspice, which is good for maintaining peace, but it’s not really what I expected from being a hero.” She was quiet for a moment, and then added, “Also, everybody is pretty calm about it as long as Auspice is just a powerful Blaster, maybe with a side of power nullifier depending on who you ask. If they knew my true power, they’d get all weird.”

“‘They’ who?”

“Everybody,” Auspice said. “Villains. Civilians. Most of the PRT directors. Non-Protectorate-affiliated heroes -- independents and other countries -- and even some of the Protectorate heroes. _Everybody_.”

Rebecca wasn’t sure she wanted to know what Auspice meant by ‘weird’, given her own assumptions of how it would go if her power became common knowledge. There was a reason Rebecca had classified Auspice’s power in the first place.

“I see,” she said.

“Yeah. So, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, being the most powerful Blaster in the world is… it’s a little boring, honestly,” Auspice said.

Rebecca looked at her own list of the new heroes and their powers. Almost all of them had strange powers, and not one was even close to Auspice’s power level. The few Blasters among them all had esoteric effects, nothing so straight-forward as the lasers Auspice used, copied from Legend.

It wasn’t hard to see where somebody as powerful as Auspice might get bored with winning fights easily, might get frustrated with only being able to use a couple of powers openly. It was even obvious why she would create new hero personas and impose fake limitations on herself. As Auspice, she was too powerful for anything to be a challenge, but as one of the weaker personas she’d created, she could have ‘real’ fights. She was basically handicapping herself to give her enemies even the slightest chance, in a way she couldn’t do as Auspice.

Rebecca wasn’t sure how she felt about the near literal demi-god sitting in front of her; a woman so powerful she handicapped herself to a ridiculous extent in fights so that it would be _more fun_.

Auspice smiled like she could tell what Rebecca was thinking. Given all of the Thinker powers she likely had -- given Path to Victory -- she probably could.

“Also, Brockton Bay isn’t very active anymore, since I’m there,” Auspice said. “And it’s actually kind of frustrating to have to get official permission to operate in other cities. Like, it would make sense for it to get easier being famous, but it actually got even harder.” She sighed.

Ah, avoiding some of the red tape of the Protectorate, then. Rebecca could understand that. She carefully didn’t look at the paperwork on her desk.

“All right,” Rebecca said. “Two more things. How long are you planning on continuing those thirty independent heroes, and are you going to create any more of them?”

She narrowed her eyes. Auspice didn’t seem bothered.

“Well, for how long I’m going to do it…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Haven’t really planned it out. And am I going to create more? Well, yeah. Probably.”

Rebecca sighed. What had she expected? But it wasn’t like she could stop Auspice from doing it, and she didn’t particularly care to do so regardless. Alarming and frustrating though it may be, Auspice _was_ helping a lot, in some of the worst cities in the country. And the PRT Directors and Protectorate leaders of those cities never needed to know that some of their independent heroes were Auspice.

“Fine. Do what you want. But I would appreciate it if you would inform me whenever you create new ones, in the future,” Rebecca said.

“Sure, no problem,” Auspice said cheerfully. “Well, if that’s all, I’ll be going.”

“Yes, that’s all.” Rebecca waved her away.

Auspice bounced to her feet as a portal appeared next to her. “Oh, by the way,” she said just before passing through her portal, drawing two pieces of paper from nowhere and setting them on Rebecca’s desk. “You missed two of my identities.”

And then she was gone.

Rebecca looked at the two papers. Both appeared to be official PRT profiles for independent heroes, the same as the profiles Rebecca had been looking through. Except, Rebecca had just gone searching for all of the new independent heroes in the past several weeks, and she didn’t recognize either hero. Frowning, she looked them up in the PRT database, and there they were, two profiles identical to the ones on her desk, submitted only minutes ago.

Given how long it took for such things to be formalized, Auspice had probably gone and registered the two new heroes shortly before going to meet Rebecca. That was also the only time either of them had interacted with the PRT; if they’d been active as heroes, there had been no other parahuman involvement.

Rebecca couldn’t help but scoff. That did _not_ count as her missing the identities.


	14. Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn

_May 16, 2011_

_Trickster_

The end result of Leviathan’s attack on Brockton Bay was minimal. Leviathan had been killed swiftly, before even managing to get into the city, and all of its waves had been repelled, so there was next to none of the damage usually associated with Endbringer attacks. The worst injuries were from the panic during the evacuation beforehand.

So, the day after the attack was weirdly normal. The capes who went to Brockton Bay for the fight had left, and the civilians who had evacuated were returning, but otherwise it was like any other day.

Trickster and the rest of the Travelers were in the section of Coil’s base he’d put them in, waiting. Waiting for answers, waiting for a job, whatever.

More immediately, they were trying to set up a TV. Possibly this was inadvisable in an underground bunker, but did they care? No. It said a lot, however, that with four people they were still struggling.

Trickster looked up at the sound of the door opening, because he was sure all of his people were already in the room, so it had to be Coil.

It wasn’t Coil.

A young woman walked into the room, as casually as if she was in her own home and not a villain’s secret underground base. Trickster stared blankly for several seconds before registering the costume she was wearing. It was Auspice, the hero who’d taken down two Endbringers and a number of S-class threats.

“Shit!” he yelled, scrambling backwards. “Get back!”

There was another exit, wasn’t there? Would Noelle fit? Trickster didn’t remember. Whether it was a result of Trickster’s reaction or because they had also recognized Auspice, the rest of the Travelers got ready for combat.

_Shit, shit, shit,_ Trickster thought. Genesis wasn’t ready yet, and it would be a while before one of her creations was finished. Sundancer couldn’t use her power in such a confined space without killing the rest of them. They couldn’t have Noelle fight, Oliver couldn’t fight, and Trickster had hardly anything to switch around. Leaving Ballistic as their only option.

Auspice looked exasperated. “Don’t be like that. I’m actually here to help you,” she said.

...What.

“...What,” Trickster said.

Before Trickster could decide if he wanted to remind the crazy powerful hero that they were villains, Auspice strode forward, right into the middle of them, patted Ballistic on the shoulder, and continued on, towards Noelle.

“Wait, don’t touch her!” Trickster said, filled with horrifying visions of crazy, _evil_ versions of a person who could easily destroy an Endbringer.

But Auspice ignored him. Noelle reared away, but she was already in the corner of the room, leaving her nowhere to go. As Auspice’s hand reached out, Trickster panicked and switched Auspice with Oliver, who yelped and flinched away from Noelle. Auspice was now next to Trickster, and she turned to give him the most unimpressed look somebody could convey with only the bottom half of their face.

“Seriously?” she said.

And then, almost before Trickster could blink, Auspice was in the corner with Noelle again, one hand against her side.

“No!” Trickster shouted, echoed by various members of the Travelers.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Time stretched onwards as they expected a mutated clone of the most powerful parahuman to grow out of Noelle.

Then, something happened.

Noelle screamed, high and piercing and agonized, as her flesh began to bubble away.

“Noelle!” Trickster switched himself with Oliver, but was unable to do anything but hover uselessly.

“Oh, oops,” Auspice said, barely audible over Noelle’s screaming, and Noelle fell silent.

She gasped for breath, awake but evidently no longer in pain, even as her bottom half continued to dissolve. Trickster watched in horror. Nobody spoke. Before long, Noelle’s monstrous bottom half was entirely gone, leaving… normal, human legs in its place. Noelle looked perfectly normal.

Noelle only managed to stand for a couple of seconds before collapsing abruptly. Trickster lunged forward to catch her instinctively, then remembered himself and forced himself to stop, allowing Noelle to fall to the ground. Noelle didn’t even seem to notice, occupied with staring at her own legs in amazement. Her very… naked... legs.

“There we go,” Auspice said, sounding pleased. “You can touch her now, there’s no threat of evil clones anymore. Sorry about the pain, by the way. I didn’t -- well, I should have expected it to be painful.”

Trickster fell to his knees beside Noelle, removing his jacket hastily and draping it over her lap. “What did you do?” he asked Auspice, but couldn’t bring himself to fully look away from Noelle.

“I got rid of her power,” Auspice said nonchalantly.

“You _what_?” Sundancer said.

“Is that possible?” Oliver said.

Auspice shrugged. “It’s possible for me,” she said. “Like I said, there shouldn’t be any problems with people touching her now.”

Trickster met Noelle’s eyes, wide with hope. He put one hand on his pistol, and with the other, took Noelle’s hand gently in his. Nothing happened. Noelle let out a sob and threw herself at him, and Trickster gathered her up in his arms. After so long…

Auspice turned and walked away, leaving Trickster and Noelle with some semblance of privacy.

“Hey, do you want me to make it so you can walk?” Auspice asked.

“What-- you can do that?” Genesis said.

“Well, yeah. Of course,” Auspice said, a smile audible in her voice. “I wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

“I --” Genesis stammered. “Yes? Yes. Please.”

“Okay,” Auspice said.

Trickster turned enough to watch, relaxing his grip on Noelle enough that she could see too. It all happened very quickly. Auspice touched Genesis’ hand, Genesis gasped, and then her legs visibly grew larger as muscles returned. Within seconds, Genesis was throwing the blanket off her lap and struggling to her feet. Alarmed, Sundancer and Oliver moved to help support her, but it wasn’t necessary; thanks to whatever Auspice had done, Genesis was only a little wobbly.

While Genesis was still gaping, silent and astonished, Auspice stepped back and put her hands on her hips.

“All right. Now,” she said, and Trickster braced himself for the other shoe to fall. “You guys have been trying to get back to Earth Aleph, right?”

A moment of silence.

“...That’s right,” Trickster said cautiously.

“Well then, it’s your lucky day,” Auspice said.

Trickster looked from Genesis to Noelle, still in his arms, and thought that it was _already_ the luckiest day they’d had since the Simurgh attack, but he didn’t interrupt.

Auspice gestured towards a wall, directing everyone’s attention to it just as the air shimmered and formed the image of the outskirts of Brockton Bay, edged in golden light.

...A portal?

“This leads to Earth Aleph, a little outside of Brockton Bay ‘cause I have no idea where else to put you. I’m sure you can find your way from there.” Auspice said it very casually, as though it was _no big deal_ to make a portal between worlds. As though she hadn’t just shown up and decided to help a bunch of strangers to a massive extent for no reason.

Trickster swallowed hard. He dragged his eyes off the portal to look at Auspice.

“How do we know that’s where it actually leads?” he asked. “Why should we trust you?”

Auspice laughed suddenly, making everyone jump a little. “Let me be clear. I don’t care if you trust me or not. But the thing is, I don’t _need_ to trick you. If I wanted to arrest you, or kill you and hide the evidence, or teleport you somewhere awful, or whatever, I could just do it directly,” she said with shameless confidence. “I’m being nice and giving you a choice. I’ll stick around for thirty minutes, and then I’m closing my portal and leaving. You have that long to decide and pack.”

With that, she went to lean against the wall next to her portal and pulled out a phone.

The Travelers had a very short, heated conversation, and got to packing. Twelve minutes later, they were ready to go. Trickster stopped in front of Auspice, holding a bag in one hand and Noelle’s hand in the other.

“Thank you,” he said seriously. Even if the portal turned out to be a fake or a trap, she had still fixed Noelle.

Auspice looked up from her phone. “You’re welcome,” she said simply. “Now get out of my city.”

Trickster gave an obnoxious, over the top bow. “As you wish.”

With one last glance around at his friends, Trickster stepped through the portal home.

_June 6, 2011_

_Emily Piggot_

There was a knock on Emily’s door.

“Enter,” she said.

The door swung open and Auspice strolled in, looking very casual and not at all as though she’d just been a state away destroying a city.

“Hi, Director,” she said.

“Auspice.” Emily inclined her head. “It’s done?”

“Yes. Ellisburg is gone and Nilbog is dead,” Auspice said. Emily let out a breath. “You’ll probably get official notice soon, but I figured you’d want to know immediately. Also, I have the video you requested.”

She set a USB on Emily’s desk.

“Good,” Emily said to the first part. As for the second… Reluctantly, Emily added, “Thank you.”

Capes, even the ones that did record their actions, rarely shared those videos with others -- fools like Uber and Leet being obvious exceptions. Emily wasn’t a direct part of the operation and the PRT itself had no particular interest in a video of Ellisburg’s destruction. As such, it was as a personal favor to Emily that Auspice had recorded her destruction of that detestable city and shared the recording with her.

Emily hated the thought of personally owing a parahuman anything, but she also had a vested interest in seeing Ellisburg destroyed.

Auspice smiled. “You’re welcome,” she said lightly.

It almost sounded like she meant it, and wasn’t planning on holding this over Emily’s head in the future. Emily didn’t believe it. Everybody, _especially_ parahumans, had their own motive.

“Anyway, if that’s all, I’ll take my leave,” Auspice said.

“Yes, you’re dismissed,” Emily said, waving a hand at her briskly.

Auspice seemed as amused as ever when Emily said that -- it probably seemed like a joke to her for anyone to act like they could order her around -- but she just nodded and walked out.

Thus left alone, Emily sat there for a moment. She had work to do. She _always_ had more work to do. But none of her work was terribly urgent, and the video likely wasn’t that long. Giving in to her impatience, Emily plugged the USB into her computer and pulled up the lone video file it had on it.

The video was two minutes long. Emily pushed play, and the video began, showing a view of Ellisburg from the sky. There was a small figure, barely visible in the video, that must have been Auspice herself flying down into the city. A second, smaller video popped up in the top corner of the main video, showing the city getting bigger as the camera descended into it. Video from the figure heading into the city, Emily assumed, and wondered how Auspice had managed to get two different views.

Nilbog’s monstrous creations soon became clear. Auspice flew through the city apparently uncaring as the grotesque creatures noticed and tracked her. The main, distant view still showed next to nothing. Before long, she came upon a throne made of flesh, and sitting on it was Nilbog himself. There was no audio, so Emily couldn’t tell if the two parahumans had spoken to each other.

Without warning, the close up video lit up with gold light so bright it made it impossible to see anything from that camera. The distant view showed a massive, swirling storm of gold fire engulf the area around Auspice and Nilbog.

Within seconds, no trace remained of Nilbog, the nearby creatures of his army, or the nearby buildings. The near view, now useless, disappeared as Auspice set off through the rest of the city. In another minute, before Nilbog’s remaining minions could even try to do anything, the city was gone. The video went just long enough to show Auspice turning her power off, fire and ash alike disappearing as though they had never existed, then ended.

Emily might have had some complaints about Auspice’s conduct, but she certainly couldn’t argue against the results.

Seeing nothing but a barren field where Ellisburg had once stood was, Emily had to admit, _very_ satisfying.

_July 26, 2011_

_Legend_

By the time of Behemoth’s appearance, four months after the Simurgh’s death, everybody seemed to understand how it worked. The PRT sent out their warning, the Truce went into effect, the Endbringer sirens went off. But nobody really expected much.

They evacuated the city of New Delhi. Though evacuating Brockton Bay for the Leviathan battle had turned out to be unnecessary, Behemoth would be coming up from underground, making it next to impossible for Auspice to take him out ahead of time without causing significant damage herself. They would have to wait until Behemoth surfaced, then have Auspice kill him.

Possibly because of that, or maybe because two Endbringers had already been killed and people were less impressed, they got less turnout for the battle than they had in years, which was truly saying something, especially considering that many of those battles hadn’t been predicted ahead of time. Many Indian capes had arrived already, and most of the usual Protectorate capes were in attendance, as were Dragon and Narwhal. However, during the Leviathan fight, many villains had taken the opportunity of having the heroes out of the city to commit crimes, ignoring the Truce where necessary in the process. As such, the Protectorate had decided ahead of time to leave many capes who would otherwise go to the battle in their home city to deal with potential crime.

Between that and a near total lack of villains from outside the country, there were shockingly few capes at the battle. If it were an ordinary battle, that would be terrible.

It wasn’t an ordinary battle.

Still, for the last time, Legend went through the motions. He did all of the things he usually did before an Endbringer battle, knowing full well that his motivational speech fell flat under the knowledge that Auspice would likely kill Behemoth by herself. They distributed armbands even though nobody expected them to be necessary. Auspice looked particularly amused as she put hers on.

And then they waited.

There was no good place to wait for Behemoth to attack, not for the people who couldn’t fly. Auspice had told Legend, Eidolon, and Alexandria previously that it didn’t matter where they had everyone stand; with an almost entirely empty city, Behemoth would come up wherever the people were, regardless of exactly where that was.

So instead, they prepared for that, with Brutes and fliers and shielders all ready to act as soon as Behemoth began surfacing. Everybody who couldn’t either fly or survive Behemoth’s kill zone was moved outside the city. Theoretically, in the event that there was a real battle, they would be moved back in to assist later. And then, they had few enough people remaining that they actually had enough ways to get everybody into the air, and everybody knew that their first move was to get out of Auspice’s way to Behemoth.

Auspice herself was already high in the air, well outside of any of Behemoth’s ranges. She wasn’t actually in any danger regardless, Legend knew, but she had been hiding the fact that she was anything but a Blaster from the majority of people, and so it made sense for her to be very careful about her safety.

Legend and the rest of the people commonly referred to as ‘flying artillery’, the ones who couldn’t survive Behemoth’s kill zone to help people on the ground, were also high in the air, far enough away from Auspice to make sure they didn’t get in her way. The fliers who could survive the kill zone were hovering near the ground, ready to spirit away one or more of the people who couldn’t fly.

Dragon, with her sensors, was able to warn them when Behemoth was approaching.

“Get ready!” Legend said.

Everyone tensed. They would have to act quickly, once Behemoth surfaced, to avoid any deaths. Auspice had told them, those who knew her full power, that everything would go fine. It wasn’t that Legend didn’t believe her, he was just concerned regardless.

“It’s almost time!” Dragon called.

Behemoth burst from the ground with a spray of dirt, rock, and lava. The assembled capes acted quickly, fleeing and ferrying others out of the immediate area. In seconds, there was a clear area around Behemoth, and it was clear for Auspice to attack.

Everyone held their breath. Auspice had managed to kill the other two Endbringers with little trouble, but Behemoth was the most durable of them. If any of the Endbringers was going to be able to withstand her attack, it would be Behemoth. When Legend had asked Auspice about it before, she had acted wounded at his lack of faith in her, then assured him that it would not be an issue. Still, Behemoth had been causing trouble and shrugging off damage for close to twenty years. Legend couldn’t help but be worried.

It wasn’t necessary.

Auspice’s golden laser flashed, and the majority of Behemoth’s body, along with a fair amount of the torn ground beneath him, was completely erased.

Unlike with the two previous Endbringer deaths, everybody present didn’t need any time to process what had happened. There was only minimal shock and confusion. The cheering started up immediately. It was official.

All three Endbringers were dead.


	15. Epilogue

_August 13, 2011_

_Auspice_

A portal appeared in front of Auspice, and she passed through, entering a dark void, with no light or sound, only inky blackness in every direction. She rolled her eyes. It was _very_ dramatic. Overly dramatic, really.

With a thought, Auspice created a glowing orb of energy, illuminating the dark space and revealing a semicircle of massive, alien monsters of varying shapes and sizes, each directly out of a particularly creative horror movie. Auspice would have flinched if she hadn’t been expecting it; even so, each one was uniquely awful in a way she hadn’t expected.

They were, of course, the seventeen remaining Endbringers, dormant and sealed away in one of the Thinker’s pocket dimensions. After she’d gotten Eidolon’s power, Auspice had deactivated them so that no more of them would appear as she killed the first three. Now that they were ‘off’, and the ability to turn them on surreptitiously removed from Eidolon’s power, Auspice could theoretically just leave them alone. However, Auspice did not intend to be that wizard from a fantasy story who sealed away the great evil ‘permanently’, inevitably forcing later generations to have to deal with it.

Anyway, there was no reason _not_ to kill them, either.

Auspice made sure she had all of their powers, then made seventeen lasers, each carefully calculated to destroy one of the Endbringer’s cores. Dormant as they were, the poor things never even got the chance to fight back.

And with that, all twenty Endbringers were dead.

Auspice hadn’t been entirely sure what to do about the Endbringers. As far as she could tell, they weren’t even shard based, which really made her question what Eden had been doing. Presumably, she had been carrying them around to experiment on or with, but Auspice honestly didn’t know. She had been able to keep them dormant and keep them from escaping the pocket dimension as the first three had done, but whatever they were and whatever Eden had been using them for, none of the powers Auspice had copied gave her great enough control over them to be comfortable leaving them alive.

Now they weren’t an issue either way, though, so it was fine.

Another portal, and Auspice was back in her apartment. Now that the Endbringers would no longer be an issue, she ran through her mental checklist again. Scion, handled. The Endbringers, handled. The Slaughterhouse Nine. Ash Beast. The Teeth. The Fallen. Heartbreaker and (most of) his spawn. The Dragonslayers. Eagleton, Ellisburg, and (more carefully) the other quarantined cities in the U.S. The Travelers, who she totally hadn’t forgotten (and it was fine, she handled them in time either way). Coil, for what that mattered. Same with Lung. She’d helped undo what Cauldron did to the Case 53s. She’d even (indirectly) helped with Taylor’s bullying problem, although it hadn’t kept Taylor from becoming a cape.

Just to make sure _everything_ would be fine, she’d even taken over both Scion’s shard network and the remnants of Eden’s, though they were unnecessary to her, since her powers were non-shard based. With some extensive remodeling, the networks didn’t even need constant maintenance anymore; they would keep working correctly once she left.

She even had a solution for when more Entities showed up on Earth. She’d added copies of Blank to the shard network so that every parahuman would have it, tweaked so that it wouldn’t work on her or the other Scion and Eden shards. That made it unnoticeable and effectively pointless, until more Entities showed up and couldn’t use their Thinker powers on any parahuman. And, of course, Scion’s and Eden’s shards were now hers, so the other Entities wouldn’t be able to steal them away. It wouldn’t make for an easy fight for humanity, but it would be a possible one.

So there. That was everything.

All of the things Auspice felt necessary for her to interfere in, anyway; the Elite were still a thing, and there were plenty of other gangs, but none that was a very big deal. Everything would go fine without her interference.

Auspice was _done_. She had successfully Improved Worm. The big disasters had been handled. Things would actually get better -- her abundance of Thinker powers assured her of that.

She could go home.

She changed out of her costume, into the very same T-shirt and jeans she’d been wearing when she first ended up in the universe. After a little over half a year of superpowers and considerably more activity than she’d gotten previously, the clothes didn’t fit very well anymore. She instinctively stowed her costume in a pocket dimension -- Circus’ power was so useful -- then stopped to think. After a moment, she went and added a few other articles of clothing to the same storage -- cape memorabilia, which she wouldn’t be able to get again if she didn’t take it with her. All of her tinkertech -- both made personally and from other people -- was already in her pocket dimension.

That was everything she wanted to bring with her.

She brought up the dialogue box she’d been ignoring ever since she killed Scion.

_Congratulations! With the defeat of Scion, your primary win condition is complete! Would you like to return home?_

_Return Later_

Things had ended up going a little out of order. Killing Scion definitely was not the end of everything she’d wanted to do. _Now_ she was done, though.

She glanced around one last time. She literally had perfect memory, so it wasn’t like she was forgetting anything. Although, even with her near-godlike power, she still had the inexplicable feeling that she was forgetting something, like her keys. But no; she’d done everything she wanted to do. She had everything that she wanted to keep.

This was the end. Of the first part of her story, anyway. She smiled. Having power manipulator in Worm was great -- but having all of the powers she’d collected, back in her original universe? That was going to be amazing.

_Return._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s the end. This is all I have planned; I currently have no intention of writing a sequel, of Auspice in her original universe or otherwise. Originally, I did want the story to be more comprehensive and for there to be more slice of life scenes, rather than skipping so much in the middle, but in the end I had too much trouble writing those scenes, so I decided it would be better to just hurry and finish the story rather than lose interest and abandon it.


	16. Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was inspired by a comment that said that the PRT would have sent Auspice to the Birdcage for being too powerful. Clearly, I disagreed, but it didn’t seem impossible, and it was an interesting idea to explore. So, here’s my take on what would have happened if the PRT had reacted differently.

_Emily Piggot_

There was a knock on Emily’s office door.

“Enter,” she called automatically, turning grudgingly away from her paperwork.

The door swung open, and Armsmaster strode in, armored boots thumping heavily against the floor. Velocity followed him in, much quieter. The visible half of Armsmaster’s face looked even more drawn than usual. Not a good sign, but then any number of bureaucratic difficulties could cause Armsmaster to look like that. It didn’t necessarily spell disaster.

“Yes, what is it?” Emily said briskly.

Armsmaster answered just as briskly. “This morning at approximately nine twenty two AM, a parahuman identifying herself as ‘Auspice’ demonstrated a Trump power that allows her to fully copy other parahuman powers.”

Emily could feel the blood draining from her face. A power to fully copy other powers? They did not need another Glaistig Uaine.

“Elaborate,” Emily ordered. “What are this parahuman’s capabilities? Under what circumstances did you encounter her?”

“Her full capabilities are unknown,” Armsmaster said, then gestured to Velocity, who stepped forward.

“This morning, Auspice showed up at PRT HQ, attempting to join the Protectorate. The power screeners requested a hero’s assistance in proving her claims of a Trump power, and Battery and I went to meet with her,” Velocity explained. “She demonstrated what appeared to be perfect copies of both my power and Battery’s power, and claimed that her power had no limitations in time or number of powers she can copy or use at one time. The only limiting factor of her power is that she has to touch a parahuman to copy their power.”

That was… horrifying. Emily couldn’t help a slideshow of every parahuman she’d ever known the power of, all wrapped up in one terrible package. She let out a heavy breath, rubbing at her temples; the ache of a migraine was already building in her head.

“All right. What else do we know about her? Who is she, where did she come from, how long has she been around, how many powers has she copied?”

“I reviewed the PRT Headquarters’ surveillance tapes,” Armsmaster said. “Auspice entered the building unmasked and was given one of the domino masks kept in stock. As such, we have video of her face, but no amount of searching has turned up any results as far as her identity or history. No cape has ever been recorded going by the name ‘Auspice’, and there are no reports of a power like hers.”

“She said that she didn’t have any other copied powers and implied that she hadn’t had her power for very long,” Velocity said.

“But we have no proof of that,” Emily said.

Velocity nodded, a little reluctantly. “Right.”

“Where is she now?” Emily asked.

“With Battery in an interview room, going through paperwork, theoretically all of the paperwork for joining the Protectorate,” Velocity said.

“All right.” Emily sighed again, thinking furiously.

“How do you want to handle the situation?” Armsmaster said.

Frankly, Emily could only see one possible way to react to a parahuman with a power as strong as Auspice was claiming.

“Arrest her,” she said.

Armsmaster nodded firmly, but Velocity jumped.

“What -- why? She hasn’t done anything wrong yet, and she’s trying to join the Protectorate,” he said.

Emily shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, feeling every minute of her age in her bones. “She’s too dangerous; we can’t just let her run around. Even if you assume, right now, that she’s honest in wanting to join the Protectorate, and genuinely wants to help people. It seems fine now, she’s impressive but not much more than any other single parahuman, but what about a couple of months from now? When she’s been out, collecting powers, gaining more and more power? When she has your power, and Battery’s, and the powers of the Empire Eighty-Eight, and Lung’s power? What if she goes to an Endbringer fight and gets some of the powers of the most powerful people in the world? What if she decides _then_, after she’s next to unstoppable, that she doesn’t want to play nice anymore? She would be the worst villain the world had ever seen; she would make Kaiser, Lung, the _Slaughterhouse Nine_, look like _children_ compared to the havoc she could wreak. We cannot and _will_ not allow that to happen. It is our duty to stop her now. Is that understood?”

Velocity was shaking, hands balled into fists, head bowed. He didn’t answer.

“Is that understood?” Emily repeated harshly.

After a moment, Velocity’s head rose enough for him to jerk it back down in a short nod.

“Good.” Emily sighed again. “Get a squad of PRT officers. Velocity and Battery are in charge of her arrest; I don’t want any other parahumans getting close to her unnecessarily. Armsmaster, act as backup.”

“Yes, Director,” Armsmaster said with a nod.

Velocity nodded too, a bit slower.

“Good. Go.”

They went.

_Velocity_

Velocity wasn’t happy about the situation. He hadn’t known Auspice for long, but he liked her; she seemed nice, calm, kind of shy. She seemed _young_, young and well-meaning, full of thoughts of making the world better.

She was going to get a harsh wakeup call, he supposed bitterly. He understood Director Piggot’s reasoning. Of course they couldn’t risk Auspice going evil, turning villain, but…

That didn’t make it grate any less to arrest and imprison an innocent woman. That didn’t make Velocity feel any less guilty about attacking a woman who’d been nothing but polite and friendly to him, and, as far as he knew, to _everyone_.

Velocity tried to put it out of his mind. He had his orders, and he knew he wasn’t willing to go against them. Instead, he tried to focus on the logistics of it.

Auspice had both Velocity’s power and Battery’s power. That made her pretty hard to deal with by itself, especially without being able to involve many of their heroes without worrying about her copying their powers. In the end, their team was Velocity, Battery, Armsmaster, and Dauntless -- since having either Armsmaster’s or Dauntless’ power wouldn’t immediately make her any more dangerous.

Fortunately, Battery was wearing her uniform, and therefore they could communicate their plans to her through the comms. Battery couldn’t reply, however, so it was impossible to tell how she felt about arresting Auspice, but either way, under Armsmaster’s orders, she led her back underground to another one of the Brute-rated testing rooms. This was for dealing with her version of Battery’s power -- she wouldn’t be able to flee through the walls to get out of the building, both because it was underground, and because the training rooms had some of the most heavily reinforced walls in the building.

Velocity, Armsmaster, and Dauntless made their way to the training room, along with a PRT squadron. Before they went in, however, Armsmaster held up a hand to halt them.

“I’ll throw a sedative grenade in first,” Armsmaster said. “If she only has Velocity’s and Battery’s powers, then she should be susceptible to it. That way, we can avoid a battle altogether.”

“Uh, but won’t Battery be knocked out, too?” Dauntless said.

“The effects of the sedative aren’t harmful. Certainly less dangerous than a battle would be,” Armsmaster said, apparently unconcerned by the thought of knocking out one of his allies as collateral damage. “Be ready to engage in case it doesn’t work.”

Armsmaster didn’t wait for either of them to agree, nor did he warn Battery. He pulled out a grenade, cracked the door into the training room enough to throw it in, and then slammed the door shut and secured it. In the next second, there was a loud bang as something hit the other side of the door, shortly followed by another bang on the wall next to the door. Finally, there was a third bang, accompanied by the shriek of rent metal as the door bent outward alarmingly.

Everything went silent.

“Holy shit,” Velocity said, looking at the reinforced metal door of the training room, now bent.

He didn’t think Battery would have been strong enough to do that, even. How had Auspice managed it?

Fortunately for the door, no more attacks were forthcoming. They waited for an entire two minutes, and then Armsmaster nodded once

“Be ready,” he said, and opened the door.

All of them braced themselves.

Auspice became visible near immediately. She was sprawled on the floor next to the door, so close that the door pushed her further as it opened. Battery was in a similar state further into the room. Both definitely seemed unconscious.

Looking at Auspice, slumped unconscious on the floor, Velocity felt another pang of guilt. This was possibly the easiest cape arrest he’d ever been a part of, and it was because they’d ambushed her. Because, for once, the heroes had initiated a battle without the other party expecting it. They’d knocked her out without any warning or explanation. It didn’t seem right.

Although, looking at the badly damaged door from the other side, Velocity couldn’t say he wasn’t glad not to have to fight her.

Despite Auspice’s seemingly unconscious state, Velocity, Dauntless, and Armsmaster waited, tense, while the PRT troopers cautiously set about the lengthy task of restraining her. She counted as a Brute and a Mover for imprisonment purposes, and she was treated accordingly: heavy chains in every possible configuration, in every possible place to limit her mobility as much as possible while still allowing some movement, and her hands behind her in buckets of containment foam.

By the time they were done, the chains probably weighed as much as Auspice herself did, and there was basically no way for her to fight or flee effectively. Velocity doubted she’d even be able to move very easily without using Battery’s power — the consequence of a power that wasn’t always in effect.

With Auspice restrained and no longer a threat should she wake unexpectedly, the PRT troopers hauled her away to one of the PRT Headquarters’ temporary holding cells, and Velocity and Dauntless did rock paper scissors to determine which of them carried Battery to the nearest couch she could lay on until she woke up.

(Velocity won, which absolutely was not because he cheated.)

_Rebecca Costa-Brown_

Rebecca had an email from Emily Piggot, director of the PRT ENE. _Urgent_, the subject line read simply. Rebecca had a lot of emails, frankly, but PRT directors also rarely used words like ‘urgent’ without meaning them, and when a PRT director had an ‘urgent’ problem, it tended to be a big one. With a sigh, she opened the email.

_Chief-Director Costa-Brown,_ the email read.

_There is a top-secret matter that I must speak with you about. Please contact me as soon as possible._

_Director Piggot_

Rebecca eyed the email. It was simple. To the point. It explained absolutely nothing. That wasn’t so surprising; if the matter was indeed top-secret — another term PRT directors didn’t throw around casually — then Piggot would know better than to discuss it in an email. Rebecca was getting a bad feeling about this. It wasn’t exactly a common situation for the PRT directors to approach the chief-director like this. PRT directors were the directors for a reason; they didn’t need to have their hands held.

So Rebecca replied to the email promptly.

_Director Piggot,_

_Of course. I can call you. What time would work for you?_

_Chief-Director Costa-Brown_

To Rebecca’s surprise, Piggot responded almost immediately.

_Chief-Director Costa-Brown,_

_Anytime is fine. Are you available now?_

_Director Piggot_

Rebecca raised her eyebrows. It really must have been urgent. Rather than send another, useless, email, Rebecca went straight to the next step, looked up Piggot’s office phone number, and called it.

“Director Piggot,” she answered the phone tersely.

“This is Chief-Director Costa-Brown,” Rebecca said. “This is a secure line. What did you need to discuss with me?”

“Chief-Director. Thank you for calling,” Piggot said. She paused briefly -- not quite hesitant, but thoughtful. “I have a parahuman here with a proven ability to copy and use the powers of other parahumans upon contact with them.”

Rebecca took a sharp breath, staggered by the reveal. It only took her a moment to consider all of the possible implications of such a power -- both good and bad.

“What are this power’s limitations?” she said. “What exactly are the parahuman’s capabilities? And what is the situation with the parahuman?”

“As far as we’re aware, her capabilities are… limitless,” Piggot said, obvious displeasure in her tone. “She has demonstrated the ability to use two different copied powers at the same time. The rest of our information about the power is what the parahuman in question has said about it and otherwise unverified, but according to her, she essentially has no limitations. She claims to be able to copy any number of powers indefinitely and use any or all of them at the same time. Supposedly, the parahuman has only copied two powers so far: our Protectorate members Battery and Velocity. Several hours ago, she came to our PRT Headquarters alleging an interest in joining the Protectorate and, after some time, was taken into custody under my orders.”

Rebecca was quiet for a moment, processing that. Potentially the most powerful parahuman they’d ever seen -- almost impossibly powerful, enough to make even Eidolon or Glaistig Uaine look mediocre.

“I see,” Rebecca said slowly. “And you currently have that parahuman in PRT custody?”

“Yes, she’s in the PRT holding cells now.”

“So… A parahuman who had not, as far as you know, committed any crimes, who actively attempted to join the Protectorate, is currently in the PRT holding cells?” Rebecca said, slightly disapproving.

It was generally bad practice to antagonize friendly and even neutral capes; heroes and rogues were better than villains, after all. The PRT was supposed to know that. Piggot was quiet for a moment, likely irritated by the implied reproach.

“I believe that she’s too dangerous to allow to roam around,” Piggot said, tone almost steely enough to disguise the defensiveness. “If she got her hands on more powers, she would become next to impossible to contain or control.”

“All right. That’s true,” Rebecca said. It didn’t really matter whether or not Rebecca disagreed; what was done was done, and now the parahuman was likely hostile to the PRT. “In any case, you want my advice on how to proceed?”

There was a moment of silence that felt reluctant, but there was no sign of it in Piggot’s voice when she said, “Yes. What should we do with her now?”

“What do you believe to be the best course of action?” Rebecca asked rather than answering the question just yet.

Piggot was going to be disappointed either way; Rebecca didn’t have an answer for her. For something like this, she would have to ask Contessa about it.

“Obviously, I don’t think we can let her onto the streets,” Piggot answered. “And at this point, now that we’ve already arrested her, I doubt we can allow her to leave; her resentment towards us would be too much of an issue. Any normal prison wouldn’t be able to contain her with the two powers she already definitely has, and any prison that would have proper security measures to handle her would have other parahumans in it, which would only allow her to collect more powers and become more dangerous.”

Piggot fell silent and didn’t follow that through to the logical conclusion, though Rebecca was certain she’d thought of it.

“So then, what does that leave us?” she said.

“The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center.” Piggot’s voice was grim. “Although she would be able to collect other powers there, without being able to escape from the prison, she would not be a threat.”

Rebecca took a deep breath. That was what she’d thought, too. The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. They’d be sending a seemingly innocent person to the Birdcage, out of concern that that person would otherwise cause problems.

That was hardly the worst thing Rebecca had ever done, or the worst reason.

“That’s true. I agree; that seems to be our best option at the moment,” Rebecca said. “However, I cannot make such a decision lightly. I must consult with others. Of course, I’ll ensure that it remains secret. What else do we know about the parahuman?”

“Unfortunately, very little,” Piggot said. “We know her face, but we haven’t been able to find any record of her at all prior to her appearance at our headquarters. It’s like she just showed up today -- she obviously isn’t a Case 53, however. The codename she gave us, ‘Auspice’, is similarly unestablished.”

“I see.”

That was… odd. As far as Rebecca knew, nobody had been brought to Earth Bet from another Earth recently, so where had this parahuman come from? Well, there was no point to wild speculation.

“Please send me all of the footage you have of her, Director Piggot,” Rebecca said. “For now, keep her in your holding cells. I’ll get back to you with a decision as soon as possible.”

As Rebecca had expected, Piggot didn’t sound particularly happy when she said, “Understood. I’ll do that. I would appreciate it if you could get back to me quickly. Several of my Protectorate members are not entirely happy with the situation.”

That was hardly a surprise. Nobody appreciated the thought that they might be arrested for something like how dangerous they could potentially be, and parahumans tended to be especially sensitive to the issue.

“Of course, I understand. Hopefully I will have news for you soon. Goodbye, Director Piggot,” Rebecca said.

“Goodbye,” Piggot said shortly.

Rebecca stayed in her chair for a few minutes after ending the call. Disagreeable though Emily Piggot may be, she was good at her job; it was not long before Rebecca got another email with the footage of ‘Auspice’ the parahuman. There was more than two hours of it, from the moment she had entered the PRT Headquarters building until she was knocked unconscious by Armsmaster.

Rebecca didn’t bother going through the footage yet. If necessary, she would do it later. For now, she went as Rebecca to go talk to Contessa.

It was not a surprise to find Contessa with the Doctor in their base. Contessa spent a significant amount of her time acting as the Doctor’s ‘bodyguard’, helping her run Cauldron’s day-to-day activity. It was for the best, in any case. Though Contessa, with Path to Victory, would be able to see the best way to handle the situation, as with any situation, the Doctor tended to be the one who made most major decisions. Even if that usually meant following Contessa’s recommendation.

Fortunately, Contessa and the Doctor weren’t in the middle of something, so Rebecca explained the situation quickly.

“She isn’t one of ours, right?” Rebecca asked just to make sure. She didn’t know everything Cauldron did, after all.

The Doctor shook her head. “No, definitely not,” she said. “Still, I wouldn’t have expected a power like that to be possible in a natural Trigger…”

They both looked expectantly at Contessa, who was frowning into the distance. After a moment, she came back to herself and looked back at them, still frowning.

“I can’t Path her,” she said.

Rebecca stared. The Doctor frowned.

“What?” Rebecca said.

“Are you sure?” the Doctor said.

Contessa’s expression twisted with annoyance. “I’m sure. Whenever I try to Path anything related to the parahuman you mentioned, I get… an error. It doesn’t work. Path to Victory can’t do anything with it.” She hissed and put one hand to her forehead. “I don’t get Thinker headaches, either, and yet the more I try, the more it hurts.”

“Stop trying,” the Doctor said, surprisingly gently considering her disquieted expression, putting a hand on Contessa’s shoulder.

“It isn’t working anyway,” Contessa said, shaking her head with a huff. “It must be a part of this parahuman’s power, as with Eidolon’s, blocking Path to Victory.”

“That is not a good sign,” the Doctor said. She looked to Rebecca. “And you said this parahuman is hostile to the PRT?”

“Yes, almost certainly, after having been arrested for no reason,” Rebecca said.

The Doctor sighed and nodded. “All right. Then I don’t see many options for how to handle the situation. Obviously, a parahuman with such a power could be immensely helpful to our goals. An angry parahuman with that power looking to strike back at the PRT, however, could be far too dangerous to allow. Contessa, what do you think?”

Contessa still looked disgruntled and pained. “I can’t predict what the parahuman might do at all,” she said. “If we allow her to go free, she may greatly impact the accuracy of my Paths. Without knowing what she’ll do, it will be impossible to know if my knowledge of the future is reliable.”

“Then, the best option seems to be to send her to the Birdcage, after all,” the Doctor said. “That will keep her out of the way. She won’t be able to act as a villain, nor unknowingly interfere with Path to Victory. In the future, if it becomes necessary, we can retrieve her. Do you agree?”

Contessa nodded.

“All right. I’ll ensure that she is sent to the Birdcage,” Rebecca said, already thinking of how to accomplish it.

In this case, Auspice’s seeming nonexistence worked for them; there would be no one to question why she would be sentenced to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. Still, there would have to be records of it, if only her prisoner file. Rebecca would need to go through official channels, at least to some extent. That wouldn’t be difficult, though; as the chief-director of the PRT, Rebecca was given a lot of leeway, and a lot of trust.

It was almost sad how easy it was to officially and legitimately send an innocent person to the Birdcage.

_Dragon_

The Baumann Parahuman Containment Center was getting a new inmate.

The PRT transport van stopped, and Dragon sent the claws to retrieve the prisoner from inside. The prisoner was a young woman, oddly normal-looking above the containment foam she was encased in below the shoulders, and she was glaring petulantly.

Dragon had been given a PRT file on this parahuman -- ‘Auspice’ -- as per usual. This time, however, she had never even heard of her before, which was not like usual. It was nearly impossible for a villain to have committed enough crimes or a large enough crime to earn being sentenced to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center without Dragon having heard of them.

“Prisoner 594, codename Auspice,” Dragon had her avatar start the usual speech. Auspice’s expression didn’t change. “PRT powers designation Breaker 7. Recommended protocols were properly carried out with added restraints.”

That was what had been put in Auspice’s official file, anyway. Dragon had been warned, off the books, that Auspice’s actual power was not so simple, but that she was a Trump who could copy other powers, likely under the assumption that Dragon would have found out anyway. Possibly, that explained how she could have committed crimes that Dragon hadn’t known about, but Dragon still didn’t like it.

Not that Dragon had any real say in the matter. Still, she didn’t like not knowing things. So, she turned off the recording -- since it would be available later, best to keep it from containing any sensitive information.

“Auspice, I’d like to ask you a question,” she said.

Auspice’s eyebrows rose, and she gave what was probably meant to be a shrug. “Go for it,” she said, a little bitterly. “I’ve got time.”

“Okay. Why were you sentenced to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center?”

“Why, huh?” Auspice scoffed. “That’s a good question. Frankly, I don’t know. I _know_ I didn’t commit any crimes, and I definitely didn’t get a trial. I guess the PRT just took exception to my power being what it is.”

She sounded extremely resentful, and Dragon didn’t blame her. She knew not to take her words at face value -- not when she was probably a villain -- but if it was true, that was horrible. And Dragon could very easily imagining people deciding to imprison someone for having a power like Auspice supposedly did. Sending an undeserving person into a prison filled with some of the worst criminals of the past two decades… Dragon hated the thought of it.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t up to her.

“I’m sorry,” Dragon said.

Surprisingly, Auspice’s expression softened slightly. “You can’t do anything about it, right?” she said.

“No. My feelings on the matter aren’t relevant. I have to do my job, which in this case is to carry out my role in enforcing the law,” Dragon said.

Even if it wasn’t quite aboveboard. Dragon had no proof that it wasn’t; all of the paperwork was in place to say that Auspice _had_ been sentenced to the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center. A judge had signed off on it.

Auspice didn’t look happy about it, but she didn’t look surprised, either. She didn’t speak.

Dragon turned the recording back on, and continued, “Prisoner will be processed to cell block E. Chance of escape from the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center is .000053 with no gross deviations. Do you know why I’m telling you that?”

That wasn’t Auspice’s actual chance of escape, of course. That was her chance of escape based on the power listed in her file. Her actual chance of escape was likelier higher, although Dragon wasn’t overly worried about it -- none of the inmates of the prison had even a one percent chance of escape.

“To keep me from trying to escape, I assume,” Auspice said.

“You’re right,” Dragon said, and launched into her usual explanation of the prison’s defenses, laying out exactly how impossible escape was.

Auspice didn’t seem particularly impressed. Not all of the prisoners did; the ‘Birdcage’ already had quite the reputation, so perhaps she had already resigned herself to being unable to escape.

It didn’t make Dragon feel any better about sending her down.


	17. Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part Two

_Lustrum_

Lustrum’s cell block was getting a new inmate. ‘Auspice’ -- a nobody, as far as she could tell; no reputation at all. Either no big crimes, or none that got any news coverage. Either way, it didn’t matter to Lustrum. Another girl was another girl, as long as she didn’t cause problems.

Lustrum went personally to meet the girl. It was uncommon to get fresh meat, and since they would, after all, be spending a lot of time together for the rest of their lives, Lustrum wanted to make sure the girl was properly cowed before she got any ideas. People who thought they were hot stuff outside of the Birdcage often found it wasn’t the same inside, and Lustrum was one of the least likely to turn somebody into mince meat for acting above their station.

Some of the others of Lustrum’s cell block went, too. Probably just for the spectacle. That was fine with her; it added to the intimidation factor. It meant that there was a small crowd of women waiting in a loose ring around the elevator’s exit when the doors finally opened.

The new girl was standing in the middle of the elevator, dripping with the containment foam counteragent, her ill-fitting prison uniform plastered to her, looking wet and miserable. Basically par for the course.

When the new girl looked up and saw them, she pursed her lips, expression unreadable, and stepped out of the elevator with surprising equanimity.

“Welcome to the Birdcage,” Lustrum said wryly, and the new girl scoffed. “I’m Lustrum. I’m the leader of cell block E, which means you’re mine now, got it? Don’t cause any problems, and we won’t have any problems. Don’t forget, you’re looking at the rest of your life in this place. Behave, and maybe that’ll mean you get to see old age. Act stupid, and you’ll find yourself a ticket to the only way out -- death. Understand?”

The new girl nodded slowly. “I understand,” she said in a soft, delicate voice.

Lustrum frowned. This girl… small and fragile looking, quiet and delicate sounding? She was going to get eaten in the Birdcage if she didn’t toughen up fast. Appearance wasn’t everything, but the kinds of criminals who got sent to the Birdcage were intimidating enough to overcome any physical limitations. Probably, Lustrum thought, Dragon had put this girl in her cell block on purpose so that she’d protect her.

“Good,” Lustrum said. “Obey me, and you’ll probably survive. What are you in for?”

The new girl scoffed again. “Trusting the wrong people and having the wrong power, I guess,” she said bitterly.

Lustrum raised her eyebrows.

“What?” one of Lustrum’s other girls said. “What does _that_ mean?”

The new girl looked at her, then around at all of the women standing around, a speculative look on her face. “Mm, well, it means that I tried to join the Protectorate,” she said finally.

That got a number of incredulous looks and a couple of laughs.

“That was the ‘trusting the wrong people,” the new girl added. “I guess my actual crime would be having the wrong power, then.”

That was interesting. It was possible the girl was entirely full of shit and making stuff up, but that was an odd thing to lie about. If it was true… what kind of power would cause the PRT to send somebody to the Birdcage just for existing?

“What is your power, then?” Lustrum said, a little wary.

Not all women agreed with Lustrum’s views, and she knew well enough from some of the others in the Birdcage that they could be just as violent as men. Although, those types of women wouldn’t have been so docile for this long, either.

“I can copy other people’s powers,” the new girl answered.

Oh, _shit_.

Practically as one, the crowd of gathered parahumans moved away from the new girl, Lustrum included. She wasn’t ashamed. The Faerie Queen, the main example of a Trump like that, was easy to appease most of the time; too absentminded to really keep the iron grip on her cell block that most of the other leaders did. She ruled through _pure power_. They hardly needed another one.

The new girl seemed amused by the reaction. For the first time, she smiled.

“Don’t worry,” she said lightly. “My power isn’t like the Faerie Queen’s. I don’t kill people when I copy their powers.”

Lustrum didn’t think that was a good thing, actually. Sure, it was comforting to know that she wouldn’t go psycho and start killing people to take their powers -- always a concern with the Faerie Queen -- but if she didn’t need to kill people to copy their powers, then… she didn’t need to restrain herself. She could copy anybody’s power that she wanted.

Shit.

Yeah, Lustrum could see the PRT deciding to send somebody to the Birdcage just because of a power, if it was one like that. The new girl -- no, Auspice had definitely been humoring Lustrum before. If she didn’t want to obey, then nobody except maybe the Faerie Queen could make her.

Auspice looked around, then nodded. “Well. Excuse me,” she said politely.

Her voice, though a little louder now, was just as delicate as before. Lustrum pitied the fool who assumed that meant she was easy to mess with and got destroyed for it.

Auspice stepped forward, and passed through the small crowd easily as everybody backed away from her hurriedly, clearing her a path to the door. They all watched as she strode out, until the door swung shut behind her.

Then, one of the women spoke.

“So, bets on how the Faerie Queen is going to react?”

_Auspice_

Auspice was still more than a little pissed off. She had really expected better of the PRT! What kind of dystopia sent people to prison for life for having the wrong power?

And now she was in the Birdcage, possibly trapped there for the next two freaking years until Gold Morning happened. To add to her immediate misery, her hair and clothes were still plastered to her with containment foam counteragent, although she had stopped dripping.

At least she’d gotten a couple good powers right off the bat; Lustrum’s power was good for defense. A few more powers and she’d really be untouchable, even amongst some of the worst villains in the world. If she was lucky, she’d be able to get a power that would let her escape, but she wasn’t sure about that.

In the meantime, Auspice would collect as many powers as possible. Preferably all of them, of course. She’d admitted what her power really was because she’d already had Lustrum’s power, and that plus Battery and Velocity’s powers meant she was almost certainly safe, but she still wanted to get as many more powers as possible before word got around about her.

Auspice was so glad Power Manipulator wasn’t actually touch-based as she’d told the PRT. This would be much more difficult if it was. As it was, she only had to walk around, and she could collect basically all of the powers nearby. And there were a _lot_ of powers; cell block E alone got her more than thirty powers, none of which she’d known about before. The advantage of being sent to the Birdcage, Auspice supposed: a lot of capes in a (relatively) small space.

There were too many disadvantages for her to consider it worth it, though. Maybe if she could escape, it would even out.

One of the powers Auspice hadn’t known about was a Stranger power, along the lines of Nice Guy’s or Imp’s powers… except weaker. It redirected attention away from the user, but not entirely, so people who saw the user would know they were there, but they wouldn’t really pay attention to them. They would just figure that the user was meant to be wherever they were. Unless in a situation where that didn’t make sense. It certainly wasn’t going to get anybody into a guarded building.

It was… weak. Auspice didn’t know how somebody had managed to get themselves sentenced to the Birdcage with a power like that. Still, she activated it anyway. It probably couldn’t hurt.

Once she’d gotten what she figured was all of the powers from cell block E, Auspice headed onward to the next one. There were guards between the cell blocks, but none of them did more than glance at Auspice as she passed them. Advantages of weak Stranger powers, maybe.

Wandering through hallways, copying power after power, people and powers that had never even been mentioned in canon, Auspice was a little surprised when a power she recognized entered her range. A Tinker power specializing in things with timers. String Theory.

Auspice sighed. Great. Another Tinker power to add to the pile of powers that were useless to her, given that she was in prison with limited resources, alongside Armsmaster’s and Dragon’s. Three of the best Tinker powers, and she couldn’t really use them. Ugh.

Oh well. At least she was getting plenty of other powers. Including several she’d never use -- it was easy to imagine how some of the people here had ended up in the Birdcage. Like the power that let its user steal people’s faces, killing them in the process, and then wear them as a disguise -- a lot like the Faceless Men from Game of Thrones, Auspice noted. They could then cycle through all of the faces they’d stolen, almost like the less cool, Changer version of the Faerie Queen -- powers not included. There was also a Master power that let the user completely control people, but they had to bite a person to be able to control them, and they could only control somebody who was asleep. Once they’d bitten somebody, however, their power worked on that person forever, and they could even tell when they fell asleep.

There were a lot of other powers, too. She’d already gotten two different Alexandria packages, plus a myriad of other, weirder powers, along the way.

It turned out, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the Birdcage was really, really big. Auspice had never been in a prison before, much less one like the Birdcage, and so the sheer size of it caught her off guard. Even so, her dedicated exploration brought her through the prison pretty quickly.

Once Auspice had left String Theory’s cell block, she passed through what must have been Crane the Harmonious’ cell block. There, she came across a power that was basically just being a werewolf? Seriously, it was a Changer power that let the user turn into some kind of demon wolf, and it even had a Trump aspect that allowed it to be shared with other people. That was literally just a werewolf. Auspice would be disappointed if the user’s name wasn’t Lycan.

After Crane’s cell block, Auspice finally came across one of the powers she’d been looking for -- Black Kaze’s. It was the only teleportation power in the Birdcage that Auspice knew about and, she figured, one of her best chances of getting out of the Birdcage.

It was also just really cool, even if it was obviously created just to replicate a specific effect from anime.

So it was with glee and a little bit of hope that Auspice started poking at the power she’d copied from Black Kaze as she continued traveling through the Birdcage. She still didn’t quite understand the rules of her ability to alter powers, but the actual mechanics of it were simple enough. It was simple enough to remove the artificial limitations that the Shard powers had, which in Black Kaze’s power’s case turned out to be a range limit. Auspice paused, metaphorically eyeing her new version of the power, with a range so massive it would probably land her in space if she swung even halfheartedly. Since _that_ was basically useless, she altered the range to be smaller again.

Next Auspice attempted to alter the part where things in between the starting point and ending point of the teleportation are damaged. Unfortunately for Auspice’s hopes of having a proper teleportation power, that was an aspect of the power, not an additional effect, and so she couldn’t just remove it. That limited how she could use it by a lot.

Still, Auspice messed with the distance-per-swing -- which didn’t seem to have an upper limit under the ridiculousness that was Power Manipulator -- and figured that she could probably still use it to get out of the Birdcage. The whole ‘existing multiple times in between starting point and ending point’ thing was weird, but it came with a built in guard against being injured or otherwise affected in the in-between, which was nice. It meant that Auspice wouldn’t have to worry about the Birdcage’s defenses if she used Black Kaze’s power to teleport out.

Of course, doing that would probably smash a hole through the Birdcage’s walls, so she’d be literally busting her way out. Auspice would prefer not to have to resort to that. But she _could_ do it, if she didn’t find any better options. If it came down to it, she could literally blow this popsicle stand. That was reassuring.

It improved Auspice’s mood considerably, in fact, to know that, no matter what, she wouldn’t have to spend the next two years in prison. Stupid PRT.

The next cell block Auspice passed through turned out to be the Faerie Queen’s. Fortunately, the Faerie Queen came into Auspice’s range, and she was able to copy her power, without having to see her directly. Auspice wasn’t sure she wanted to know what the Faerie Queen and her Trump BS thought of her.

Examining the Faerie Queen’s power distracted Auspice for a while. It turned out that she had a _lot_ of ghosts, and therefore a lot of powers. No wonder it seemed like she could do basically whatever she wanted. And, even better for Auspice, she was able to alter the power to remove the ghosts as middlemen, giving herself the powers directly. If Auspice hadn’t felt safe before, she certainly did now -- Gray Boy’s power alone made her practically invincible, even moreso since her powers weren’t Shard based.

Of course, she then had to alter Gray Boy’s power to remove the visible effects.

After the Faerie Queen, Auspice had collected all of the female cell block leaders’ powers except one -- Ingenue. That also meant that Ingenue’s cell block was the one with the hole to the men’s side of the prison. Which was perfect, actually; Auspice couldn’t have planned it out better if she’d been trying.

Somewhere near the middle of the last cell block, Auspice came across what must have been the hole to the men’s side. It was much more heavily guarded than any other area of the prison, all of the women around the destroyed section of wall looking about ready to bite the head off any man who tried to pass through -- without paying the fine, of course. Auspice remembered that much from the interlude.

Since she hadn’t collected all of the powers in the cell block yet, Auspice passed by the hole and continued the other direction. She hadn’t yet decided how, when, or where she’d break out, or even really if she was going to, but one could never be too careful.

Then, the entirety of the (inhabited) women’s side of the prison explored and all of the powers copied, Auspice headed back to the entrance to the men’s side. Unlike before, when she’d just passed by and all of the guards had ignored her, this time, several of them focused on her as she approached the hole in the wall. The Stranger power failing her, Auspice supposed. It was probably too far out of the ordinary for somebody to cross into the other half of the prison, and they _were_ actively guarding the hole, so the power wasn’t strong enough to direct their attention away.

One of the women blocked Auspice’s path. Nailbiter, Auspice assumed from the power. She couldn’t tell if Nailbiter was scowling or if that was just what her face looked like.

“Hold up. I don’t recognize you. You new?” Nailbiter said, surprisingly clear around the blades in her mouth.

Auspice withheld a sigh and nodded. It seemed she wasn’t meant to make it all the way through the Birdcage without any more human interaction.

“Yes, I just got here. I’m Auspice,” she said.

She wondered if the guards would stop her from passing. She could almost certainly take them in a fight -- she already had all of their powers plus hundreds more -- and they’d probably even deserve it, given that they had been sent to the Birdcage. Of course, Auspice now had two examples of undeserving people being sent to the Birdcage: herself and Canary. Who knew how many other times the same thing had happened. Besides that, Auspice didn’t particularly want to fight her way through, nor did she want the trouble getting into a fight would probably cause her.

It was up to the guards either way, Auspice supposed. If they let her through without trouble, that was all the better.

One of the other women spoke then. Auspice didn’t recognize her or her power. “What cell block are you in?”

“Cell block E.”

“Lustrum’s cell block, huh?” the woman raised her eyebrows. “And you want to go to the men’s side? Really?”

Auspice nodded again. “There’s somebody there that I want to talk to,” she said. It was a lie, of course; she had no interest in talking to _anybody_ in the Birdcage.

“Huh. All right, well. We usually charge men a passage fee to get in, but I don’t particularly care if you want to go to the men’s side,” the woman said. She eyed Auspice. “Plus I don’t suppose you have any cancer sticks, do you?”

Although Auspice was mostly dry by now, she was still a little damp and sticky with the containment foam counteragent. Presumably, it highlighted exactly how ‘new’ to the Birdcage she was.

“No, I don’t,” she confirmed.

The woman sighed. “All right, whatever, go through then, if you’re sure. But listen, don’t do anything stupid. Lustrum’ll just be pissed off if you cause her trouble.”

“I understand. I won’t do anything stupid,” Auspice said with a smile. It was funny how vague ‘anything stupid’ was. “Thank you.”

The woman scoffed and waved her off. Nailbiter stepped out of her way. Auspice still couldn’t tell if she was scowling or not. It didn’t matter; nobody bothered her again as she made her way past the assembled women and crossed into the men’s side of the prison.

Once she was through, fortunately, the Stranger power she was using was powerful enough to keep any of the men from paying attention to her -- apparently it was able to disguise the fact that, as a woman, she shouldn't have been there. That was good, because Auspice was pretty sure that if she started getting harassed -- as she was pretty sure the guards had expected -- she would have ended up fighting her way through after all.

One by one, Auspice picked up the men’s cell block leaders’ powers. Gavel was first, which was nice; Gray Boy’s power already made her nigh impossible to kill, but Gavel’s power meant that it would be harder to do any real damage to her, especially combined with the other Brute powers she’d collected. After that was Acidbath, whose power was basically useless to her.

_However_, it wasn’t Acidbath that was the true find of his cell block. One of the numerous unnamed-in-canon inmates had a teleportation power. Auspice was so happy. It was a proper teleportation power, not weird like Black Kaze’s, or, even worse, like Oni Lee’s. It wasn’t even line-of-sight based! Actually, it did follow somewhat strange rules, but Auspice was used to that from Shard powers. The power had a circular area -- about two hundred feet in any direction -- that the user could teleport around in. It also gave the user awareness of everything inside that range. But teleporting reduced the range, and each consecutive teleport reduced it more, although it only took a couple of seconds for it to recharge back to full.

Auspice could see why the original user couldn’t get out of the Birdcage. The range of the teleportation simply wasn’t big enough to reach outside. Auspice, however, had Power Manipulator. It turned out that the range limitation was artificial, and Auspice was able to remove it, giving her a range of the entire planet and beyond. Without limitations, the power was a lot like Clairvoyant and Doormaker combined, actually, except that it didn’t cover the multiverse, only one Earth.

There were no words to express how delighted Auspice was at this discovery. She wouldn’t need to bust her way out with Black Kaze’s power after all. And she could teleport anywhere on the planet. Still, Auspice decided to collect the rest of the powers in the Birdcage before leaving, just for completionist reasons.

The next cell block turned out to be Lab Rat’s, which was just as bad as Acidbath -- seriously, even if Auspice wanted to do any bio-Tinkering, she’d go find Bonesaw and copy her power.

After that was Teacher, and Auspice copied his power automatically, thought about it, and removed his power entirely. Then, using her copy of his power, removed all of the powers he’d given out. Because screw him in particular. Also, screw Ward. This way, whatever else happened, Teacher couldn’t get up to shenanigans later, so at least one major plot of Ward was derailed. Good.

The next cell block leader… Auspice couldn’t remember the name of. It was kind of similar to Gavel, or something? Whatever, it didn’t matter. Another Trump power, nothing spectacular, especially not compared to Power Manipulator.

Last was Marquis. Wasn’t Marquis the leader of cell block W? If cell block E on the women’s side was furthest from the point where the two sides met, why was W farthest away on the men’s side? Neither of those things made sense. Auspice didn’t understand how the Birdcage was laid out at all.

Anyway, Marquis’ power was kind of cool. At least it was potentially useful. One of the other powers Auspice got from that cell block was interesting, too. It was a Thinker power that let the user see relationships between people -- friendship, love, loyalty, hatred. Basically everything. The more useful aspect of it was that it had actual, literal lines leading between people who had relationships with each other, which meant that it would be really easy to find people.

In any case, all of the powers in the Birdcage thus collected, Auspice was free to teleport out. She went to just outside the mountain first, hovering in the air near it, to look at it. It really didn’t look like there was an entire prison inside it.

Auspice thought for a moment. What to do now that she was officially an escaped felon? Did that make her a fugitive? Well, whatever. First, she decided, she’d go back to Brockton Bay, just to get Coil’s power, for safety’s sake. Then Eidolon’s power, naturally. And if she hung around the Triumvirate long enough, she could probably get to Cauldron’s base and nab Path to Victory, Clairvoyant’s power, and Doormaker’s power.

Then, with the entire world at her fingertips, and a book’s worth of meta knowledge… Her first goal was to collect more powers and become infinitely powerful, of course, especially so that she would be able to kill Scion. Other than that, she could do pretty much anything. She could do good things, be a hero, save the world -- like she’d originally intended to do. She was still mad at the PRT, though, so...

Maybe she’d go on vacation.


	18. Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part Three

_Emily Piggot_

Emily, along with Armsmaster, was still dealing with unhappy Protectorate members’ complaints about sending Auspice to the Birdcage when she got the phone call.

“Director Piggot,” she answered.

“Director Piggot, this is Dragon.”

“Dragon,” Emily said. She didn’t have much direct contact with Dragon. There was only one likely reason for Dragon to be calling her now. “What is it?”

Dragon hesitated. “I’m afraid there’s no good way to say this,” she said eventually.

Emily’s heart stopped. “What?” she snapped.

“I have bad news,” Dragon said, then continued before Emily had to prompt her again, “The parahuman known as Auspice… has escaped from the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center.”

“What,” Emily repeated, heart freezing with horror and dread.

“Approximately one hour and seventeen minutes ago, Auspice was sent down into the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center,” Dragon said, correctly interpreting Emily’s response as horror rather than actual lack of understanding. “She is visible inside the prison until fifty-two minutes after that, at which time she abruptly disappears. I can no longer find any indication of her presence inside the prison.”

Emily had to put her head in her hands and breathe for a moment. This job was terrible for her health. It was starting to sink in, the possibility -- likelihood -- that the most powerful parahuman the world had ever seen had managed to escape the Birdcage… with who knew how many of the inhabitants’ powers. And with a newfound grudge against the PRT, the Protectorate, and Emily herself.

She swore silently to herself.

“She escaped? I thought the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center was supposed to be impossible to escape from,” Emily said harshly.

Dragon didn’t necessarily deserve the treatment -- it was Emily’s decision that had landed them here -- but then, it was Dragon who she had escaped from.

“It is supposed to be impossible to escape,” Dragon said calmly. “I’m not sure how she managed it. Obviously, none of the other inmates have a power that allows them to do the same. By all appearances, it seems that Auspice teleported out. There are two inmates with Mover ratings within the prison with powers that could be considered teleportation, and neither of them are capable of such a thing.”

Dragon’s tone was perfectly even, polite and helpful and still slightly apologetic. Yet Emily heard the unspoken accusation perfectly clearly: _The information you gave me was incomplete._

Emily sighed and tried to focus on the absolute disaster scenario they were facing. This was, in all likelihood, the _worst outcome_ possible.

“So we have no idea what she’s actually capable of at this point,” she said.

“Yes, it seems so,” Dragon said. “However… Based on her actions in the fifty-two minutes she was inside the prison, I believe we should assume that she has the powers of every parahuman currently alive in the prison.”

Emily’s breath left her in one shocked breath. Her heart really couldn’t take more of this.

“All of them?” she said sharply, more desperate than anything. “She couldn’t have touched every single one of them in such a short period of time.”

“No, she couldn’t have, and she didn’t. However, she walked through the entire prison, everywhere there were people. As soon as she had finished, she escaped. I find it difficult to believe that she was sightseeing, and she didn’t speak to anybody unless it was absolutely necessary. In light of that, I can only see one reason she might have done such a thing.”

Emily took a deep breath. In… and out. And again.

“You’re probably right,” she acknowledged. There was a reason Dragon was so well known, and it wasn’t because she tended to be wrong. “Which means that Auspice lied to us about her exact capabilities.”

Emily wanted to be smug about it -- the fact that Auspice had lied made it more likely that she _had_ had ulterior motives. But either way, they were in the same situation now: Auspice was free, powerful, and completely impossible to predict. Except now she was definitely angry at the PRT, whereas before she might not have been.

This was such a terrible situation.

“It seems so,” Dragon said.

Emily shook her head. It didn’t really matter how Auspice had escaped, did it? It only mattered that she had.

“Thank you for letting me know, Dragon,” she said.

“Of course. It’s my duty, after all,” Dragon said immediately. “If it would help, I can run some algorithms, see if I can find Auspice now.”

“Yes, please, that would be very helpful,” Emily said. She had to resist the urge to sigh yet again. There was a lot of work ahead of them.

“Okay. I’ll start on that,” Dragon said.

“Thank you,” Emily said again. The words tasted like ash in her mouth -- not simple polite courtesy this time -- but Emily wasn’t an ungrateful person. “I’ll let Armsmaster know. Please coordinate with him.”

It was practically a joke to say such a thing. Of course Dragon was going to coordinate with Armsmaster. She’d do it even without Emily saying anything.

Dragon was too polite to say what they both knew. “I’ll do that. Goodbye, Director Piggot.”

“Goodbye, Dragon.”

Emily hung up the phone and sighed once more. What a mess. And it was a mess that was largely Emily’s fault. But how could any of them have predicted that Auspice would be able to escape the Birdcage?

Most likely, they wouldn’t manage to find Auspice before she started on whatever she was planning. That could be disastrous. It would, at least, make it easier to find her. For what good that would do. Was there even anything they could do, at this point? The thought of all of the people in the Birdcage… Several of them had been caught in underhanded ways: Black Kaze had fainted from hunger, Marquis had been attacked off-guard in his home. Glaistig Uaine hadn’t even technically been _caught_; she’d surrendered.

Not to mention, Auspice could apparently copy powers from farther away then they’d expected. It would be risky to send anybody but very long-range parahumans into a battle with her, lest their powers be copied too. Even with the Triumvirate, could they do anything to her?

...But that was a problem for later. And, Emily acknowledged, probably not even _her_ problem. This was definitely a Chief-Director Costa-Brown and the Triumvirate problem.

For now, she had work to do.

_Alexandria_

Auspice had escaped from the Birdcage, and they were facing yet another S-class threat. No, even worse; a triple-S-class threat, if there were such a thing. The biggest threat in any of the worlds short of Scion himself. It hadn’t even been an entire day since Auspice escaped, and, unsurprisingly, she hadn’t made an appearance yet. It was impossible to predict what she might be doing in secret, and possibly even more difficult to predict what she might do. Still, they were already setting things up to begin searching for her, keeping an eye out in order to, at the very least, find her quickly once she resurfaced.

But, unfortunately, normal life didn’t stop just because they had another problem to deal with.

And so Alexandria was on patrol. Of course, for one of the Triumvirate, ‘patrol’ was actually more like ‘being visibly on duty’. It had been a long time since any villains in Los Angeles were stupid enough to commit crimes while Alexandria was around to catch them -- the same with Eidolon and Legend in their cities. As such, patrols ended up more like unofficial PR events. Because Alexandria was famous, and people tended to come from all around the country to see her.

Walking around at street level might have been a dangerous prospect if not for the fact that she was Alexandria, because she was all but mobbed by fans whenever she did it. Of course, even civilians in a world like theirs knew better than to bother a hero while they were working, but at the same time, the mob mentality was very much a thing. As soon as one person dared approach, suddenly everyone was doing it.

Surrounded by a crowd of people, Alexandria didn’t notice at first. It wasn’t until later that, driven by a gut feeling, intuition, maybe something she’d noticed without consciously registering, Alexandria looked over -- directly at Auspice.

By this point, Alexandria had gone over hours of footage of Auspice, every bit of time she’d ever been on camera, and she had perfect memory. Of course she recognized her immediately. Auspice obviously knew that Alexandria had noticed her, too. She smiled and waved cheerfully, then turned and walked away.

Auspice was on the other side of a crowd of civilians from Alexandria. There was no way she’d be able to get to her in time for anything.

And, sure enough, within a couple of seconds, Auspice passed behind somebody and never reappeared. She must have teleported away; there was no other way she could have disappeared so cleanly.

Alexandria couldn’t react openly. She was a public figure currently surrounded by adoring fans. But she was irritated by the near-miss, by Auspice obviously taunting her, knowing that she could get away with it. Even more than that, Alexandria was uneasy, because Auspice had been able to get that close to her -- well within what Dragon estimated her actual range for copying powers was -- and had just shown that she was going around copying strong powers. She already, most likely, had Alexandria’s power, and it wouldn’t be any more difficult for her to get Eidolon’s and Legend’s powers.

And it had only been a couple of hours since Auspice escaped, and neither Eidolon nor Legend had been part of the original decision about her. Neither of them knew what she looked like.

Alexandria swore inwardly. They definitely did not need Auspice to have _Eidolon’s_ power; she was bad enough without it. Alexandria tore herself away from the crowd of people as quickly as she could without suspicion, then went to talk to Eidolon.

Eidolon was understandably bemused to have Alexandria walking into his office in Houston with no warning, but he took it in stride.

“I need to ask you something,” Alexandria told him.

“All right…?” Eidolon said.

Alexandria used Eidolon’s computer to pull up a picture of Auspice without a mask, which he allowed her to do, although he was practically projecting a sense of incredulity.

“Have you seen this person?”

Eidolon looked at the picture for a moment. “I have. Not long ago. She wanted to shake my hand,” he said, a frown audible in his voice.

Alexandria sighed. Of course. If it had been Alexandria, she would have gone for Eidolon’s power first, as well. And it was probably already far too late to keep Auspice from getting Legend’s.

“Alexandria, what is this about?” Eidolon asked, obviously growing tired of the mystery.

Eidolon did need to know either way. Alexandria put her thoughts in order and prepared to explain the situation.

_Auspice_

Auspice was waiting.

Eventually, one of the Triumvirate would want to go to Cauldron’s base and -- probably -- as soon as one of Doormaker’s portals was open on Earth Bet, Auspice would be able to teleport through to Cauldron’s base. And then Path to Victory would be hers. Well, it might take getting Clairvoyant’s and Doormaker’s powers first, depending on whether or not Contessa was in the base. Still, either way, she’d get Path to Victory eventually.

But, just because she was waiting, that didn’t mean she wasn’t doing anything else. She’d already gone around collecting most of the powers she knew of, as well as gone to pretty much every Protectorate base -- and, in the process, gotten a lot more powers that she hadn’t known about.

There were _so many_ cool powers. One of the ones Auspice was surprised to have found: a Stranger 12. Not Sleeper. Sleeper wasn’t even a Stranger, apparently, and Auspice totally wasn’t bitter about her theory about his power being wrong. Anyway, the actual Stranger 12 was somebody that literally nobody knew about. His power didn’t allow for it; it was like Imp’s power but literally jacked up to 12. It was impossible to be aware of him, even from afar. Thankfully Auspice had Invictus, or she wasn’t sure how it would have affected her.

Auspice… actually wasn’t quite sure how it worked. Not exactly, anyway. She didn’t think that her activating the power would cause people who knew of her to forget about her, but they would stop being aware of her in any new circumstances.

Probably.

It was definitely absurdly powerful. Auspice thought she could pull off a stunt like a stealth archer from Skyrim: stand directly in front of somebody and shoot them with an arrow, then watch them go, _huh, what? Must have been the wind_, completely ignoring the fact that they still had an arrow in them. The power wouldn’t even allow somebody to notice something as a direct result of the users’ actions, it was so ridiculous.

In any case, that was why she wasn’t worried about (figuratively) walking directly into Cauldron’s base. Aside from the fact that she was as close to invincible as possible, it would be all but impossible for any of them to notice that she was there.

She just needed somebody to open a freaking portal.

Auspice’s money was on Alexandria. Alexandria seemed to cross between Earth Bet and the Cauldron base the most often, anyway. That was why she was basically stalking her -- from afar, though, because she had powers that let her do that. It was awesome. And it meant that nobody would ever need to know that Auspice was a creepy stalker, no matter how creepy she was.

Auspice’s area of awareness expanded suddenly. She only hesitated for a split second before activating her new Stranger 12 power and teleporting to the point of connection. It wasn’t where she’d expected -- nowhere near Alexandria -- and not at all who she’d expected.

It was… the Number Man, going from the Cauldron base to Earth Bet. Or so Auspice assumed, based on his power and the fact that there weren’t many men it could be.

Well. She hadn’t expected that. Maybe she should have… The Number Man had an office in Cauldron’s base, but he didn’t live there, did he? Regardless, he obviously did do business on Earth Bet.

It didn’t matter.

Auspice hurriedly teleported through into the base before the portal could close. As soon as Auspice entered the base, she got the Custodian’s power. Fortunately Power Manipulator didn’t cause the powers to activate automatically.

The Cauldron base was… very white, Auspice saw. Very boring. Auspice wasted a little time judging their interior decorating skills (or lack thereof). She’d expected it from the descriptions from the book, but it was still different to see it in person. It was surprisingly disappointing. Not at all what she’d expected of a shady organization’s secret lair.

Once Auspice was done judging the decor, she examined the layout of the base. Fortunately, it was interconnected enough for her to teleport directly to Contessa, who was in fact in the base, along with Doctor Mother. Path to Victory, get! And it was _amazing_.

Also, the Stranger power she was using worked well. Between it and Blank, she was able to stand in the same room as Contessa without being noticed. Given that Contessa was _the_ Thinker, and also the one who always knew everything, that was pretty satisfying too.

Some of the possible combinations of Path to Victory and Auspice’s many other powers were awesome, too.

Because it would eventually be relevant, Auspice did a Path to Killing Scion, and… yeah, it was just as easy as she’d expected, thanks to Power Manipulator and Blank. So that was that taken care of, as soon as she wanted to go back to her original universe.

That worry off her mind, Auspice teleported to Clairvoyant and Doormaker, then used their powers to portal back to Earth Bet. Now that she had all of the most relevant powers -- Path to Victory! -- and could easily collect all of the other useful ones in the multiverse, Auspice could really start having fun.

_Rebecca Costa-Brown_

The next time they caught sight of Auspice was not quite twenty-four hours after her escape from the Birdcage.

And it was in one of their own PRT Headquarters.

Ironically, the first Rebecca heard of it was not from any one of a number of people and algorithms searching for Auspice. Rather, she was contacted for a reason entirely unrelated to their search for Auspice, and Auspice herself wasn’t even the main subject: somebody had claimed the bounties for all eight current members of the Slaughterhouse Nine at the PRT Headquarters in Tulsa.

That person was going by the name Auspice.

Auspice. _Auspice_ had claimed the Slaughterhouse Nine’s bounties.

The Director of the Tulsa office had authorized the payout because Auspice had provided ample video evidence of the fight and the Slaughterhouse Nine’s deaths. The only reason Rebecca was being informed directly was that the Slaughterhouse Nine were a major S-class threat, and their bounties were each considerable, and the combined amount was truly massive. Ordinarily, Rebecca didn’t care about bounty payouts -- but ordinarily, it wasn’t the bounties of people with Kill Orders that were being claimed.

Of course, almost nobody knew about Auspice, either her power or her status as an escaped criminal from the Birdcage. Even if they had, they couldn’t have done anything about it; an integral part of the bounty system was the guarantee that anybody was allowed to collect on a bounty _and then leave_.

But since nobody even knew Auspice was important aside from the fact that she’d just taken out an S-class villain organization, by the time Rebecca was told about it, Auspice had long since gotten the money and left.

With nothing else to do, Rebecca watched Auspice’s proof video. It would, if nothing else, give information about her fighting style and powers.

The file containing the ‘proof’ turned out to be several videos, all from different angles, showing different Slaughterhouse members’ deaths. Auspice had apparently found and confronted them in an open area with no other people around. It looked like an empty rest stop near a freeway. None of the Slaughterhouse Nine had more than a couple of seconds to react before Auspice obliterated them using what appeared to be a simple Blaster power. Simple, yet unbelievably powerful; in one hit, even Crawler was reduced to nothing.

The Siberian, of course, was an exception. Although she’d disappeared on the video, the same as all of the others, that didn’t actually mean anything. The Siberian was different, and there was no proof of Manton’s death. It was possible Auspice had missed the fact that the Siberian was a projection -- she had no reason to know, after all. Yet Rebecca doubted that Manton would have given up so easily. He would have reformed the Siberian and sent it after her again. But the Siberian hadn’t reappeared on video, and if Manton had sent the Siberian after her again off-screen, Rebecca wouldn’t be surprised if Auspice had figured it out and killed him after all.

They’d have to wait and see if the Siberian appeared again.

In the meantime, the question of whether or not Manton around was hardly important, dwarfed by the fact that Auspice was still around. The Siberian was nowhere near as dangerous as Auspice, especially considering that she now likely had all of the Slaughterhouse Nine’s powers.

Rebecca had work to do, but instead she pulled up the surveillance footage from the Tulsa PRT Headquarters of the time Auspice had been there. She doubted she’d get anything useful -- Auspice had Rebecca’s own power, and she wouldn’t be able to read herself -- but everybody made mistakes.

Auspice had shown up to the PRT still wearing civilian clothes, with no mask. It seemed she wasn’t interested in keeping a secret identity -- which was fair, perhaps, considering that she didn’t even have an identity. One new thing added to her outfit, however, was a jacket with a fancy stylized letter ‘A’ on the back, and a smaller one on the front. Auspice was only in the building for a total of perhaps twenty minutes, and then she smiled and waved and skipped out with hundreds of millions of dollars.

The money didn’t matter. The problem Rebecca had was that _Auspice_ \-- the escaped Birdcage inmate with plenty of reason to hate the PRT and plenty of reason to become a villain -- had gone after, and taken out, the Slaughterhouse Nine. Not knowing her motivations was more frustrating than ever. Why would she do such a thing? It was possible she’d had a personal grudge against one of them. Or perhaps she had simply wanted the money.

Regardless, the end result was the same: Auspice, back in the wind, with an obscene amount of money, and all of the Slaughterhouse members’ powers.

Auspice became more and more dangerous every day, and she was acting in a way none of them had predicted. At least if she’d acted more like any other villain, they would have known what to expect.

But instead she was acting like a hero. She must have had some kind of plan, and it was obviously more complicated than simply being a villain. Considering that Auspice could easily be the most terrifying villain in the world even if she did it openly, that was a very bad sign.

If she wanted people to consider her a hero, perhaps she was planning to destroy the PRT’s reputation. After all, Auspice was one of less than a dozen people who knew that she’d been semi-illegally but definitely immorally sent to the Birdcage without a trial. It would be difficult to prove, but if she could, then the fact that the PRT had sent a hero who had done things like take out the Slaughterhouse Nine to the Birdcage could be very bad for them.

Even if just to talk to her, they needed to find Auspice.

_Auspice_

Auspice went back to Brockton Bay again. She already had all of the powers from there, having copied them shortly after escaping the Birdcage when she went back for Coil’s, but today she had a somewhat different goal in mind.

First, she went to the PRT Headquarters building. She used the weaker of her Stranger powers, the one that just redirected attention away from her, to keep anybody from recognizing her, the person at the front desk or anybody who might be looking at the footage from the cameras. With that, it was easy to stroll in and buy a shirt from the gift shop.

Auspice went for one of the Brockton Bay specific ones, which had all of the current Protectorate ENE heroes on it except Triumph, who hadn’t been in the Protectorate long enough to be added to the merchandise. She took her jacket off, shrugged the merchandise shirt on over the shirt she was already wearing, then put her jacket back on over it -- not that, at this point, anybody really needed the symbol on her jacket to recognize her by.

Then, she teleported right to the Boardwalk, Stranger power still active, and searched for the best place to take a selfie in front of the Bay. It didn’t take long to find the perfect spot, where the Rig, glowing shield and all, was visible behind her. Auspice smiled, put one hand up in a mocking peace sign, and took the picture.

The point of this picture was petty revenge. Because it was all well and good to troll the PRT as a whole (everybody in the know about Auspice) indirectly by becoming famous as a hero for killing the Slaughterhouse Nine and then narrowly (deliberately so) avoiding them when they showed up in person to ‘talk’ with her. Most people didn’t really deserve more than that. Two people, however, did deserve more than that.

Emily Piggot, who had been the one to order Auspice arrested, and Armsmaster, who had ambushed Auspice with a knockout grenade.

So, the picture of Auspice in front of the Protectorate ENE’s headquarters, wearing a shirt obviously bought from the PRT ENE headquarters, was for Piggot. Auspice emailed it to her, using an email address created specifically for the purpose.

Then she teleported away; there was no reason to hang out on the Boardwalk. Not that it would be dangerous, but because nobody would even notice. Rather than continue to hang out on the Boardwalk pointlessly (it wasn’t even pretty), Auspice went back to the simple hotel room she’d rented after collecting the Slaughterhouse Nine’s bounties.

Already waiting in the hotel room was phase two of Plan: Revenge on Piggot. Auspice still had about a minute to go before Piggot would notice her email, however, so she turned to the revenge on Armsmaster first.

Since Armsmaster was a Tinker, that meant he got Tinker-tailored revenge. Auspice was particularly proud of it, too. She withdrew a grenade from hammerspace. A Tinkertech grenade, to be specific. It was made to go off with a loud bang, releasing a figurative ton of glitter and a banner which would hook to the walls of the room. It was completely harmless, even if it went off in somebody’s face -- even the attachments for the banner were the stick-on kind, so there wouldn’t be holes in the wall.

Well. If somebody was really unlucky, they might get the banner stuck to their face. But Auspice figured Armsmaster was smarter than that.

Between her numerous Tinker powers -- but specifically Armsmaster’s and Bakuda’s -- it was child’s play to make a grenade that could spontaneously create a bunch of glitter and an entire banner with words already on it. The hardest part was getting it to the point where it could automatically attach the banner to the walls of a room regardless of the size of the room.

This banner would say, in big, bright, sparkly, multi-colored letters, ‘Surprise!’, and then in smaller but no less eye-searingly bright and cheerful letters, ‘Made you flinch’. It was signed as ‘Auspice’, though she doubted that would be necessary; they’d know it was her.

That was the point.

Auspice opened a small portal into Armsmaster’s lab on the Rig, which was also where he currently was, and pulled the pin on the grenade.

_FBI, open up!_ she thought, amused, and tossed the grenade through, closing the portal behind it before the grenade went off and glitter bombed _her_, too. It was a shame Armsmaster wouldn’t have gotten the joke, or she would have said it out loud.

Oh well. She’d have to content herself with the thought of Armsmaster having to clean glitter off of and out of everything in his lab, probably furious at the fact that she’d so casually gotten past the Rig’s defenses all the while.

It was probably petty and definitely mean, but the thought was a satisfying one.

Then, it was almost time for Piggot to be looking at Auspice’s taunting email, so she turned back to her revenge on Piggot. The ‘revenge’ was, in fact, a cake, one of the big ones that would ordinarily have something written on them like ‘Happy Birthday’. This cake, of course, was not a birthday cake. Instead, it said, ‘Thanks for all the powers!’ in pastel pink frosting. Then, written smaller under that was, ‘PS, share some cake with Armsmaster too’. Just to make it clear that the cake and the banner were part of the same party, of course.

Using Path to Victory to cheat, Auspice waited until Piggot was looking at the email, then portaled the cake onto her desk where Piggot wouldn’t see it until she turned away from her computer monitor, carefully arranged so that she would be able to read the words on the cake as soon as she noticed it.

Then Auspice stood back and laughed at the thought of Piggot’s reaction. Auspice wasn’t quite so forgiving as to be genuinely thankful for Piggot sending her to the Birdcage, and Piggot would know that full well. Just the implication that Auspice’s power and success was due to Piggot would drive her crazy, though.

Auspice _could_ do much worse, of course. She was satisfied with just that, though. Auspice, and the memory of Piggot’s decision, would haunt her the rest of her life. That was good enough.


	19. Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part Four

_Auspice_

Auspice was on vacation, but before that, she had to prepare. She went and bought two different models of phone, along with assorted odds and ends, and Pathed her way to finding a good hotel. She’d already gotten a hotel room, but she wanted a _high-quality_ hotel room. And, apparently, expensive hotels _were_ worth it, because the best option turned out to be a hotel in France that cost a _ton_ of money. Of course, the economy on Earth Bet sucked, so that was part of it too.

…

Auspice was rich now, so she went with it.

Anyway, there were still more expensive rooms and hotels. She wasn’t even in the penthouse or anything; for sheer wasteful luxury’s sake, she’d have to get one of those hotel rooms another time. This time, she had other goals.

A combination of Path to Victory and gobs of money got Auspice into the fancy hotel and expensive hotel room without any trouble despite both her cheap clothing (which she had gotten shortly after escaping the Birdcage because she definitely wasn’t going to run around in a prisoner’s outfit) and the fact that she didn’t speak French. It was fine, Path to Victory handled it.

Once in the hotel room, she got a little distracted from her ultimate goal by the room itself. It was very fancy-looking, all cream and gold decor, which was a little boring, honestly. There was a minibar, and an entire little sitting area with chairs and a coffee table in addition to the desk and desk chair. The bed looked so soft and comfy that Auspice had to flop into it just to check. It… it was a bed. Not uncomfortable, but not great either. Auspice was a little disappointed.

Once she’d finished looking around the room, Auspice settled at the desk and opened her new phones, then promptly dissected them for parts. Tinker powers were weird, but they were awesome to actually have, especially when combining them. Something like a Tinkertech phone was easy to make, because Tinkers were BS. Auspice still firmly believed that; having Tinker powers herself had, if anything, only confirmed it.

Then, with her proper phone complete, she hooked it up to the hotel’s wifi. They had really nice wifi. Then she set out -- thanks to portals, she could have her phone use that hotel’s wifi from anywhere.

Her first stop: dinner. It had been days since she’d eaten anything. Of course, Auspice didn’t theoretically need to eat anymore, or it would have been a higher priority, but ‘didn’t need to’ was not the same thing as ‘couldn’t’.

Seeing as she was newly rich with hundreds of millions of dollars she couldn’t take with her back to her own universe, Auspice naturally wasn’t just going to eat at Mcdonald’s. She wanted to try something new. She wanted to see if there was any point to ridiculously expensive restaurants. And she was super rich, so going to a restaurant that charged hundreds of dollars per person was totally possible, even if it made something hurt in her chest.

Since Auspice didn’t know expensive restaurants -- especially not on Earth Bet -- she looked it up online, and then shamelessly used Path to Victory. Interestingly enough, the list of high-quality (expensive) restaurants didn’t cross over with Path to Victory’s options for restaurants that Auspice would enjoy at all. She even requested expensive restaurants specifically, because the point was to waste money on pointless luxury, yet Path to Victory still didn’t suggest any of the most famous restaurants. Interesting.

It presented Auspice with a dilemma, however.

Listen to Path to Victory and go to one of the less famous restaurants, one that she wouldn’t have known about if not for Path to Victory, and enjoy the meal? Or go to one of the most famous restaurants anyway, and experience the food that was apparently unenjoyable despite being so expensive?

Well, the point _was_ the Experience, but Auspice was willing to trust Path to Victory when it predicted that she wouldn’t enjoy it. And why would she want to do something she knew she wouldn’t like?

The less famous restaurant it was.

(The food was good, but three hundred dollars good? Not so much.)

_Armsmaster_

The banner formed by the grenade Auspice had set off in Armsmaster’s lab was easily removed, pulling off the walls like it had been taped up. That was the _only_ easy part of the cleanup. Despite originating from a localized blast, glitter had managed to get into every opening, onto every possible object in the lab, Armsmaster himself included.

It took more than two hours, after he’d reported to Director Piggot and done a threat assessment, just to clean his lab and the armor he was wearing of the glitter. Along the way, Armsmaster also collected the remains of the grenade, though his power didn’t give him the same prowess with others’ Tinkertech that Dragon’s did.

Some Tinkers built in a kind of failsafe into their tech, especially one-use things, so that there wouldn’t be any remnants of it left once it went off. Auspice obviously hadn’t done that, as the pieces of her grenade were intact and easily identifiable.

Armsmaster sat in his chair and glowered down at the pieces of the grenade, now sitting innocently on his worktable. A _matter generation grenade_. It was an incredible feat of engineering even for Tinkertech. It was extremely impressive. The information Armsmaster got just from studying the pieces was invaluable, and was enough to allow him to build more matter generation technology.

And it had been made by somebody who had had their power for less than a week, with scraps from a normal store, for the sole purpose of _taunting_ Armsmaster. And it definitely was exclusively intended to annoy him. It could just as easily have been a truly dangerous grenade, and Armsmaster would be dead now, yet Auspice had deliberately made it harmless. She was just mocking him.

It was working. Armsmaster had been a Tinker, actively working to invent new things and improve his tech, for twenty years, and Auspice, in the span of less than a week, had invented something beyond any of the things he’d managed. Judging by certain, easily recognizable elements in the grenade, Auspice had even used _Armsmaster’s power_ to make it, at least in part.

Armsmaster’s technology and the ease of making new tech would be greatly improved by what he now knew about matter generation technology.

And he would never be able to use it without remembering that it came from a childish twenty year old playing a prank on him. Armsmaster was already certain of that. It would always be a reminder of Auspice and her childish _joke_.

Still glaring furiously at the grenade, Armsmaster continued examining it to determine how it had worked. There were several segments that didn’t quite make sense; Armsmaster couldn’t identify their purpose. One piece of it didn’t seem to have been properly connected to the rest of the grenade in the first place--

Armsmaster’s fist clenched, hard enough that his joints complained.

The grenade _hadn’t_ been fully assembled. There _was_ a segment which hadn’t been connected properly, and it was the part of the grenade that was meant to self-destruct the pieces to keep from leaving anything behind. There was absolutely no chance that any Tinker could have accidentally failed to connect it, which meant that Auspice had done it _on purpose_.

Auspice had deliberately left the pieces of her grenade for Armsmaster to examine.

Armsmaster gritted his teeth, ignoring it when his jaw began to ache.

She wasn’t just taunting him. She was patronizing him.

Looking closer, Armsmaster noticed that there were miniscule letters engraved into the metal, almost too small to be read by the naked human eye.

‘_I look forward to your future creations ;)_’

Armsmaster very carefully set the piece of metal down on the table and did not crush it in his armored fist as he wanted to do. It was extremely helpful to his future inventions, he reminded himself, and there was no point in wasting it. That did not help the blinding rage. In fact, it only made it worse, the fact that not only was he being patronized, but she _was_ helping him considerably, and entirely because she wanted some form of petty revenge.

Armsmaster had thought before that he was as angry as he could be. Yet, somehow, Auspice had found a way to annoy him even further. She obviously had some kind of power that allowed her to be inhumanly infuriating.

_Assault_

The break room on the Rig had a TV in it, mounted in one corner. Assault had no idea how it worked, considering that they weren’t on land and the shield should block every kind of signal that a TV would use. Assault generally just attributed it to Tinkers, although probably not Armsmaster personally.

The TV was always playing the news, though, which meant that they all ignored it more often than not. As members of the Protectorate, they usually got any of the information relevant to their jobs well before the news, anyway.

But sometimes information wasn’t considered relevant to their jobs.

“_\--That the Slaughterhouse Nine, infamous villain organization, has been eliminated by an Independent hero_,” the news was saying.

“Whoa, hey, what the hell,” Assault said, and went to turn the volume up.

Battery turned away from the coffee pot, newly filled mug in hand. “Huh? What’s up?”

“_That’s right, Bill,_” another news person said. “_Early this morning, PRT Department 47, located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, made a press release announcing the elimination of the Slaughterhouse Nine._”

“Oh,” said Battery.

“_According to PRT spokespeople, an Independent hero unaffiliated with the PRT going by the name of ‘Auspice’ showed up to claim the considerable bounties for the members of the villain organization._”

“Wait, what?” Battery said. “Auspice? That’s what it said, right?”

“Uh, yeah.” It took Assault a moment to recognize the name. “Oh! Wasn’t that the name of the parahuman you met with?”

That was to say, the parahuman who had been covertly sent to the Birdcage. Because of his history, Assault had never been a direct part of handling Auspice, and the others had, in fact, been ordered not to tell him anything about it. That was fair enough, because he was pretty pissed about it, and he couldn’t say whether or not he would have done something stupid if he’d had the chance. Though Battery had obviously not listened to the order, she still hadn’t told him anything about it until it had already gone through.

“Yeah… It can’t be, though. She’s…” Battery trailed off, frowning.

“_It seems, whatever form of evidence she brought to prove her claim, it was compelling, as it took less than thirty minutes for her claim to be verified_,” the news person was saying.

Assault debated whether or not to say anything direct about it. It wasn’t a long debate. “Maybe somebody broke her out of the transport,” he suggested.

It was probably not in his best interest to say such things, but Assault had never been the kind of person to care too much about that. In any case, if somebody _had_ broken Auspice out, he had to applaud them. If _anyone_ deserved to be broken out of a Birdcage transport, it was somebody who hadn’t even committed any crimes in the first place.

“Maybe,” Battery said.

“_It seems that, following the example of Independent hero team New Wave, Auspice has decided not to conceal her identity_,” the original newscaster was saying.

Battery sucked in a sharp breath, and Assault looked back to the TV, which was now displaying a picture of a woman on the screen. It was obviously candid, probably cropped from surveillance footage. He wondered how the news had gotten it.

“That’s _definitely_ her,” Battery said. “She must have escaped somehow. Why didn’t they tell us?”

Assault had some unflattering answers to that question, which he was, in fact, wise enough not to say aloud while in the Rig.

Just then, Armsmaster stomped into the room. He or Piggot must have also noticed the news.

“Information regarding the parahuman known as Auspice is classified,” Armsmaster said severely. It was impossible to tell whether or not he was responding to Battery’s question. “You are strictly prohibited from discussing your and the PRT’s former interaction with her with anyone that is not explicitly already aware.”

Assault scoffed bitterly, but it was Battery who spoke.

“So we’re refusing to acknowledge that we’ve ever met her before,” she said flatly.

_So we’re refusing to admit that we tried and failed to imprison her in the Birdcage_, Assault corrected. Of course, Battery was better than he was at not irritating figures of authority.

“Yes,” Armsmaster said, with no indication at all that he was bothered by what he was saying. “As far as the Protectorate is concerned, we were not aware of Auspice’s existence until she claimed the bounties for the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

Assault rolled his eyes. Cue the PRT covering their asses. Well, whatever. That was no real surprise.

He had to appreciate a new hero being sent (unsuccessfully) to the Birdcage, then, while theoretically a fugitive, going on to take out a well-known S-class threat and claiming the bounty from the PRT. Now that she was publicly a hero, it was the PRT that was in a difficult position -- they couldn’t say anything about it at all.

It was hilarious how badly trying to send Auspice to the Birdcage had backfired on the PRT.

_Auspice_

Fruity cocktail drink: acquired.

Swimsuit: acquired.

Beach chair: acquired.

Time to lounge around on a beach drinking one of those stereotypical umbrella drinks.

Auspice stretched out on her chair, wiggled her toes in the sand, and glanced around at the picturesque scenery. It really was beautiful. The gleaming white sand, the water so clear a variety of colorful ocean creatures were visible in the depths.

Auspice sipped her drink. It was alcoholic, and the first alcoholic drink she’d ever had, but it was so overpoweringly fruity that it was impossible to taste the alcohol. Which was, of course, the point.

…

The sun shone down on her, bright and cheerful. Fortunately, she didn’t have to worry about sunburns anymore, or even about getting weird tan lines. Truly, the benefits of superpowers were great and numerous.

…

Auspice sipped her drink.

…

Okay, actually she was really bored. Seriously, the scenery was nice, but there was only so much to see, and there was no interest in looking at it again. The drink tasted good, but it wasn’t particularly attention grabbing.

Why did people like this activity so much?! Why was ‘sitting on a beach drinking a fruity drink with an umbrella’ so popular in Worm fanfictions?! It was boring!

Heaving a dramatic sigh, Auspice collapsed against the back of her chair. Thanks to various powers that increase hand-eye coordination, her fruity drink, held in one hand, barely even sloshed around in its cup.

Maybe, Auspice considered, the problem was that she couldn’t get drunk? After all, Contessa was a popular choice for the ‘off on a beach’ scene, and there was nothing keeping her from getting drunk. Same with some alt!power Taylors… although she was a minor, so she really shouldn’t have been drinking alcohol.

Well, whatever the reason, Auspice was still bored. Idly, she scooped up a handful of shimmery white sand with the hand not holding her drink and heated it into glass in her hand.

She should have a _real_ vacation, and by that she meant do all of the things she’d ever wanted to do, plus all of the things she was now capable of with superpowers. Climb Mount Everest. Hike the Grand Canyon. See a bunch of the sights. Troll the PRT a bit, maybe (definitely). Then she’d kill Scion and go back to her own universe.

Auspice shattered the glass into tiny fragments and let it fall back to the sand. She was on an empty Earth anyway, so there was nobody to step on the pieces.

Smiling at the thought of her upcoming adventures, Auspice drained her glass of fruity drink and stood to portal back to Earth Bet. She _could_ do most of those things in a different Earth, or even back in her original universe, but where was the fun in that?

_Rebecca Costa-Brown_

Rebecca put her head in her hands.

The capture of the Teeth at Auspice’s hands was all over the news. Of course it was. Auspice had neutralized them, then called the civilian police, who then had to call the PRT. By the time the PRT and Protectorate responders got to the location, numerous news crews were already there -- and Auspice herself was gone.

But Auspice taking down the Teeth was one thing. It wasn’t actually that shocking, after her debut killing off the entire Slaughterhouse Nine. Most people didn’t even realize just how difficult it would be to fight the Teeth due to the Butcher’s presence.

The real problem was that the fact that Auspice had apparently _removed_ the Butcher’s power was also all over the news. The layperson obviously wouldn’t understand why it was important that the Butcher specifically had had their power removed, but anyone could see why the ability to remove parahuman powers was a big deal.

Rebecca groaned. There was nobody in her office, and therefore nobody to maintain her appearance in front of.

Auspice. The most powerful parahuman in any of the Earths, in competition for the most powerful being in any of the Earths. Their likely best chance of killing Scion.

And she was actually _worse than him_.

Potentially, anyway. She certainly seemed smarter, and for all that she hadn’t done anything yet, neither had he -- technically. Instead of one Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, now there were two. It was only a matter of time, and although it seemed unlikely that Auspice might destroy every version of Earth, as Scion would, her intentions and goals were almost as difficult to read. And they still had no idea where she had come from.

For all they knew, Auspice was related to Scion somehow.

_Auspice_

Mount Everest wasn’t as cool as Auspice had expected, really. Pun not intended.

She didn’t really feel temperature anymore, and she didn’t need to breathe, so the cold and the altitude didn’t bother her. Plus, she had admittedly cheated by teleporting to the top of the mountain, and she could fly anyway, so there was no real sense of accomplishment.

And, for being the tallest mountain on the planet, there wasn’t a very good view, as it was mostly obscured by clouds. Plus, again, Auspice could fly. Well, whatever. It was still an Experience, right? She could say that she’d been to the top of Mount Everest! Nobody ever needed to know that she’d cheated.

Auspice pulled out her phone and sent it floating away to take a picture of her for posterity’s sake. Then she got an idea. She opened PHO, using the same wifi from the hotel in France, and created a new thread. She’d already created an account ahead of time, and gotten it verified, too.

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**♦Topic: Auspice goes on vacation**   
**In: Boards ► ??? ► ??? ► ???**

**Auspice** (Original Poster) (Verified Cape)  
Posted on January 19, 2011:

I'm going to post pictures of my vacation here -- AKA, Auspice does cool things! Suggestions are welcome, but I'm not promising to follow them. First up: Mount Everest wasn't as impressive as expected.

Mount-Everest-Selfie.jpg

Auspice couldn’t help but laugh. The PRT was going to hate her so much.

_Rebecca Costa-Brown_

A number of high-ranking members of the Fallen had been taken into custody, thanks to Auspice, as had Heartbreaker and almost all of his children. She had also removed the powers of Heartbreaker, his children, and all of the members of the Fallen with Master powers, who had been a major part of why the Fallen had managed to exist for so long.

Those former Masters, along with the Butcher who was no longer a parahuman, brought up an entire debate regarding the Birdcage. Specifically, the ethics of sending somebody who was no longer a parahuman to the Birdcage, even if they had been sentenced to be imprisoned there while committing crimes as a parahuman. After all, without their powers they weren’t a threat, people argued. And the Birdcage was suddenly a much closer prospect, as, after all, people said, it was a thin line between those who were ‘no longer’ a parahuman and those who had never been.

So went the arguments, anyway. And regardless of the way the debate went, the point remained that the Birdcage was suddenly in the public eye, and the question of who and why people were sent to it was suddenly being asked.

Rebecca had to wonder if Auspice had done it on purpose. It was hard to imagine that she hadn’t, given the circumstances. It made a lot of sense for her to politically attack the Birdcage. But if that was her goal, why hadn’t she used her own experience, gone public with the fact that she had been sent to the Birdcage as not only an innocent woman but as a powerful hero? Her popularity could have caused a public outcry that would be difficult for the PRT to handle.

It still could, Rebecca thought, for all that the more time passed, the less likely it seemed that Auspice would do anything with it. Perhaps this was her plan: ensure that people were talking about the ethics of the Birdcage, if not quite the correct part, and then bring up her wrongful imprisonment at the hands of the PRT when it would hit the hardest?

But that probably wouldn’t make up for the fact that the impact would be lessened as time passed. If Auspice had some kind of grand plan, that wouldn’t be a very good one.

They’d already prepared for such an eventuality, in any case, and gotten rid of all of the proof that anything had ever happened. All of the proof except the Protectorate ENE capes, that was. But it was unlikely that a member of the Protectorate would go against orders and say anything.

_Auspice_

The boat picked up speed, causing the parachute to catch the wind and lift Auspice into the air. The wind blew in her face, tossing her hair, and she felt almost weightless.

...It took about a minute for Auspice to decide that she had miscalculated. Although parasailing sounded like a fun activity, and it was one that she’d wanted to do since before she got superpowers, the end result was a little disappointing.

She should have known; after all, she was capable of independent flight at near the speed of sound -- without a Breaker state. With one, she could go even faster. Considering that, it was obvious, in hindsight, that parasailing would not actually be very entertaining. She might as well just fly on her own. It’d be faster that way, too. Even the fact that Auspice had no control over her flight while parasailing was less than thrilling. Because even if she _couldn’t_ fly, falling from this height and hitting the water wouldn’t hurt her in the slightest.

Auspice sighed. Parasailing was a bust. She’d have to cross some other things off her list, too. There were a lot of things that had seemed fun in theory, but since she couldn’t really turn off having superpowers, they would probably be just as bad as parasailing.

Like skydiving. That was one that she never would have even risked _without_ superpowers and nigh-invincibility, but it was basically pointless now anyway. Same with hang gliding. Faux flying. Lame.

Even things like hiking. Auspice couldn’t even lie to herself and claim that she’d actually hike up a mountain or whatever when she could 1, fly, and 2, teleport.

For a second, Auspice was almost disappointed to find so many normal activities all but ruined. Then she shrugged, released the catch on her harness, and flew down to pay so that she could move on.

She’d just have to find more superpower-friendly fun activities.


	20. Alternate Take: Birdcage Blues Part Five (End)

One way to keep things interesting while having superpowers, was, of course, to do things that required superpowers to do at all.

For example, a casual swim at the bottom of the ocean. Not near where Leviathan was -- she didn’t want to freak out the people on PHO, after all. Or start a debate on whether or not she should try to attack a dormant Endbringer, as was probably more likely. Although seeing people’s arguments could be interesting… Nah, not worth it.

So, a more mundane part of the ocean floor it was. Unfortunately, none of the deep ocean creatures seemed interested in letting Auspice take a selfie with them, but the non-mobile parts of the ocean attraction were still good enough.

Auspice settled on the ocean floor so that it looked like she was standing normally, not abusing her superpowers to remain there as she actually was. She sent her phone a little ways away to take a picture, but she’d forgotten that the camera, unlike her vision, wasn’t good enough to make anything out in the absolute darkness so deep into the ocean. That was fine. She altered Purity’s power so that it was light without any heat or damage, then altered it a little more so that it could be maintained as a ball of light rather than flying off as a beam.

Then, with enough ambient light for the camera, she took a picture. The picture looked pretty good, too; creepier than she’d originally intended, with the white light from Purity’s power filtering through the water lighting Auspice and the ocean floor in strange ways, surrounded by complete darkness in every direction.

It was perfect.

She let herself drift upwards as she posted it on PHO. Her earlier adventures and the pictures she’d posted had gotten surprisingly popular -- maybe because capes didn’t usually show off their powers so casually. Whatever the reason, there were a lot of people already on her thread, and the new picture got several replies almost immediately.

**► Aiming_Low**  
Replied on January 22, 2011:  
@Auspice How did you take a picture at the bottom of the ocean? OK, you have powers, but why isn't your phone being crushed by the pressure? Or bothered by the fact that it's underwater?

There were other comments along those lines. Surprisingly few people were willing to just accept cool pictures; they had to question them. Auspice didn’t mind.

**► Auspice** (Original Poster) (Verified Cape)  
Replied on January 22, 2011:  
Well, there's two possibilities. One, Tinkertech, or two, magic. Take your pick ;)

As long as nobody else minded that she never gave a clear answer, anyway. Actually, that was a lie. The fact that everybody got upset whenever she gave a silly response was half the fun.

Still laughing as her thread exploded with people complaining and theorizing, Auspice moved on to her next big show: the moon.

Space was really pretty. The Earth was pretty, too, from space. But it really looked like a picture, even though she was seeing it for herself. It was just too remote. Like many things, it got boring surprisingly quickly.

Auspice didn’t even need Thinker powers to see the accusations of pulling the picture from the Internet, but, standing on the surface of the moon, she took a picture -- not a selfie -- of the Earth and posted it to PHO anyway.

**► namesarehard**  
Replied on January 22, 2011:  
looks fake

**► DigaWell**  
Replied on January 22, 2011:  
Selfie version please

And those two weren't the only ones along those lines. Auspice laughed. It was exactly what she’d expected. Obligingly, she turned around and levitated her phone away from her to take a picture of her with the moon visible at her feet and the Earth in the background. By the time she went to post it, there was another comment that deserved its own response.

**► Nakyak** (Cape Geek)  
Replied on January 22, 2011:

@Auspice, how did you get to the moon, though?? What is your power!? Please explain!

People asking about Auspice’s power opened the _best_ opportunities for messing with people -- both the poor people on PHO and the PRT.

**► Auspice** (Original Poster) (Verified Cape)  
Replied on January 22, 2011:  
Moon-Selfie.jpg

@Nakyak

How did I get to the moon, you ask? It was pretty easy, actually. Legend's power can fly ridiculously fast, so it didn't even take that long.

That was a lie, of course. Auspice could literally teleport, and that was how she’d gotten to the moon. But where was the fun in saying that? Anyway, there were no iconic teleporters like Legend where she could namedrop them so easily and have them be recognized immediately.

**► Nakyak** (Cape Geek)  
Replied on January 22, 2011:  
@Auspice WHAT. Legend's power?? That is NOT HELPFUL! You can't just say that! EXPLAIN.

**► namesarehard**  
Replied on January 22, 2011:  
@Auspice Seriously, you come back here. Don't ignore us, I know you're reading these replies. What do you mean by 'Legend's power'?

Auspice cackled to herself and didn’t respond as the thread devolved further. She’d have to make a new thread soon, with all of the new comments. People guessed surprisingly close to her power very quickly, although of course none of them expected the scale of it, and they usually added restrictions like ‘three powers at a time’. Auspice was willing to bet the PRT, who were absolutely stalking her on PHO, were pitching _a fit_ about it.

Good. It was her power and she’d tell people about it if she wanted to.

* * *

It took Auspice less than two weeks to get tired of the Worm verse. She’d decided basically as soon as she got sent to the Birdcage that she was too pissed off to stick around any longer than necessary, and honestly after that nothing had really changed her mind.

Without being careful of anybody’s feelings or expectations, it was easy to take out most of the world’s major villains within those two weeks, plus all of the people and things that might not technically count as villains. Between that and handling the Endbringers and Scion before she went, Earth Bet and the Worm verse as a whole would probably be fine. They didn’t need her and she didn’t want to stick around, so…

Since Auspice was done, she set about handling all of the leftover money she still had from the Slaughterhouse Nine’s bounties -- donating it to various charities and whatnot. She used a little bit of the money to anonymously set up a fund to pay for Taylor to attend Arcadia and made sure Taylor would be told it was a scholarship.

Then, her last order of business before she went to go assassinate Scion: the Endbringers. Auspice hadn’t wanted to do anything with them too early because, according to Path to Victory and her other precog powers, Scion _was_, in fact, aware enough that he’d notice something wrong with the Endbringers, so if she did anything to them, it wouldn’t be long before Scion started being ridiculous. Apparently, he was actually really worried about what the Entities considered one of the worst possible scenarios -- their test subjects rebelling -- so he’d just go on his rampage, start Gold Morning early. It seemed over the top, but who was Auspice to judge a literal alien.

In any case, it didn’t matter anymore. She was ready to go anyway, so she’d just go straight from handling the Endbringers to killing Scion, and then her win condition would be completed and she’d be able to go home.

Auspice _could_ just kill the Endbringers. In most situations, she probably would. She didn’t feel particularly affectionate towards the mass-murdering monsters. In this case, however, she’d decided to get in one last act of trolling the inhabitants of Earth Bet. Of course, just killing the Endbringers while they were dormant would freak people out pretty badly, when they started missing their scheduled attacks.

But that wouldn’t be fun enough.

Instead, Auspice used Eidolon’s power and tweaked the Endbringers. Basically, they were now programmed to act like Scion; they would travel around being ‘heroes’, saving people and so on. Of course, she had to add in a ton of restrictions on their actions -- no killing unless absolutely necessary, minimal property damage, no leaving areas radioactive or mindraping people. Thanks to Path to Victory foreseeing issues that Auspice herself wouldn’t have thought of, the Endbringers were soon proper heroes, with morals and everything.

The other seventeen Endbringers would continue appearing slowly over time, but Auspice added the same changes to their programming so that all twenty of them would be heroes.

Finally, Auspice ran a Path to Killing Scion Without Anyone Knowing.

...And then she corrected it to Killing Scion Without Anyone Seeing. That was better. She didn’t need to go to all of the effort to make sure nobody -- Cauldron included -- would ever notice she’d killed Scion.

And then, finally finished, all of her stuff collected in hammerspace, Auspice returned to her home universe.

_PoV Not Found_

When it first happened, all three Endbringers appearing in different places at the same time, the world panicked. The Endbringer sirens went off. The Protectorate scrambled to get responding heroes to each site. By the time any of them got there, however, the Endbringers had moved on, causing each team of capes to have to chase an Endbringer around the world.

It didn’t take long for it to become apparent that the Endbringers were not following their usual M.O. All three of them -- especially Behemoth -- were being far less destructive than they usually were, not to mention the lack of the Simurgh’s scream and Behemoth’s Kill Zone. None of them were killing _anyone_. Even when capes attacked them directly, they would carefully stop that person from being able to attack without hurting them.

Although it didn’t work out very well at first due to people’s reasonable fear of them, it appeared that the Endbringers were acting as heroes. They would rescue kittens from trees, stop muggings, interfere in cape battles. Pretty much any crime or act of cruelty might get a sudden Endbringer interrupt. Villains and non-parahuman criminals were, of course, horrified. The warlords of Africa were likely quite upset, as their affairs, basically their entire empires, were disrupted by the Endbringers.

Everyone, parahuman or not, discussed how to handle this new development. In the end, however, they were forced to come to an undesirable conclusion: there was nothing they _could_ do. If the Endbringers suddenly wanted to play at being heroes, they couldn’t stop them.

A lot of people were seeing the Endbringers for the first time. With their new levels of activity, the Endbringers were in a lot more places a lot more often. It was almost impossible for people to avoid running into one at some point. Of course, even so, it would probably be years before anybody could encounter one of the Endbringers without being more afraid of the Endbringer than whatever situation they had been in before, but they would all just have to deal with it. Because that was the only thing they could do. They’d get used to it eventually.

And, well, at least the Endbringers weren’t killing anybody anymore. They were actually horrifyingly effective as heroes. They were so overwhelmingly powerful that nobody stood a chance against them, so once they decided to stop a crime, that crime got stopped.

In light of the new risk of Endbringer, criminal activity across the globe dropped.

_Contessa_

“Scion is gone?” Alexandria repeated disbelievingly.

Contessa nodded, a little annoyed by the disbelief. Keeping track of Scion was one of her self-appointed duties, and it was the one she took the most seriously. “He disappeared two days ago, sometime in the morning. I haven’t been able to find him.”

“That explains why nobody else has noticed yet,” Eidolon said. “Nobody else keeps close enough track of him. What now, then?”

“We have to continue as usual,” Doctor Mother said. “We can’t afford to assume that he is no longer an issue if we’re wrong.”

“But we have no idea what could have caused his disappearance?” said Eidolon.

Contessa shook her head.

“Actually,” Alexandria said slowly, and Contessa raised her eyebrows.

“You didn’t even know he was missing until now,” she said, miffed by the idea that Alexandria might know why he was gone when Contessa herself didn’t.

“No, I know. It’s just that Auspice -- the power copier,” Alexandria clarified unnecessarily; as though any of them didn’t know that person by name. “She had been posting on PHO near constantly, posting pictures and talking to people. But she hasn’t posted anything or been seen in two days. Her last post was that morning, too,” she added.

“You think their disappearances are related?” Contessa said.

Alexandria nodded and spread her hands like, _well._ “It’s a little too coincidental for both of them to have disappeared at about the same time, otherwise.”

That was true.

“All right. Then, assuming for now that their disappearances are related, what does that mean?” Doctor Mother said. “What are the possibilities for why it happened?”

“Best case scenario, they got into a fight and killed each other off,” Alexandria said dryly.

“Worst case scenario, they teamed up and are planning something together,” Contessa said.

Although, that wasn’t necessarily any worse than Scion alone, except that it halved the chance that Cauldron’s actions would save humanity. From 0.1% chance to 0.05% chance.

“It seems more likely that they would fight each other than team up. Their actions so far are very different,” Eidolon said. “But if they had fought to the death, surely there would be signs of the battle. It couldn’t have gone completely unnoticed.”

“It might have, if it didn’t happen on this Earth,” Alexandria said.

“Wouldn’t the Clairvoyant have noticed?” Eidolon said.

“No,” Doctor Mother said. “Something about Auspice seems to interfere with his power, as with other Thinker powers.”

Like Path to Victory, Contessa thought grumpily.

“Which may also mean that Auspice has extended her immunity to the Clairvoyant’s power to Scion,” Contessa said. “Allowing them both to hide.”

“For whatever reason they might be doing that,” Eidolon said, but thoughtfully, not aggressively.

Contessa just shrugged. How were any of them to know the reasons Scion might do anything? And Auspice, despite seemingly being human, was hardly any better.

They were quiet for long enough that Doctor Mother spoke.

“Then, essentially, we know nothing about the situation regarding either of them, nor why it happened,” she said, and sighed. “In that case, we --”

A piece of paper appeared in midair, then fluttered down to settle on the table between them, writing visible on the side that faced up. They exchanged glances.

“I can’t tell anything about it,” Contessa said, annoyed.

It must have had something to do with Scion or Auspice, then.

“It’s facing me,” Doctor Mother said, standing to read it without touching it. She let out a startled breath. “It says, ‘To Cauldron, Stop being evil. Scion is dead, and I’m not sticking around, so you have nothing to worry about anymore. I fixed the Case 53s in your basement. You’re welcome. You should let them go. I know that you have no reason to believe me, but consider: I have no reason to lie. With --’” She squinted at it. “I believe it says ‘love’, but crossed out so that it actually says ‘With apathy, Auspice’.”

Doctor Mother looked up at them. There was a moment of silence.

Alexandria put her head in her hands. “What the hell,” she said.

That summed it up well. To have worked towards possibly defeating Scion for thirty years, only for the next biggest threat they’d ever encountered to so cavalierly dismiss them and their efforts. There were not many other ways to respond to that.

But that wasn’t even the biggest problem they had.

“She’s watching us,” Contessa said. “Not only does she know of us and our actions, but she must be currently aware of us in some way, for that letter to be so well timed.”

It was obvious that Doctor Mother had been about to conclude that they could do nothing but continue as they had been and wait until something changed. Evidently, Auspice disapproved.

“So it’s a threat,” Eidolon said darkly. “‘I know where you are, and I can get to you at any time.’”

“But she basically said it herself. If she’s powerful enough for that -- and she must be -- then she has no reason to lie about her intentions,” Alexandria said. She scoffed quietly. “This is a woman who has been _playing tag_ with the entirety of the PRT for more than a week, treating it as some kind of fun vacation. We can’t do anything about her. We haven’t been able to so far.”

“What, then? We take it at face value that, for some reason, she killed Scion, and then just decided to leave?” Eidolon said.

“What else can we do?” said Contessa. The others fell silent. “We know that she has your power, Eidolon. Given that she’s capable of teleporting an object directly into our base, she’s probably copied Path to Victory, too -- not to mention hundreds more powers. She’s as terrible an enemy as Scion; I can’t use Path to Victory on her, and we have such a minuscule chance of being able to defeat her that it’s almost pointless to try. The one advantage we had over Scion was that he didn’t know we exist, and Auspice clearly already does. There is nothing we can do. We’ve already lost this fight.

Eidolon stayed silent, impossible to read through his mask. Alexandria’s mouth was set in a thin, unhappy line. It wasn’t like Contessa was happy about this, either.

“Then, what are you proposing, Contessa? It’s not like you to give up,” Doctor Mother said.

“I think we should believe that she has, in fact, killed Scion. There are few other reasons he might have disappeared, and altruistic or not, Auspice has reason to want him gone,” Contessa said. “Then, since Scion is no longer an issue and Auspice already knows about us, I think we should continue our established plan of building up as high a parahuman population as possible in the hopes of fighting Auspice if necessary, but act more overtly. Without the need for secrecy, we could achieve a lot more.”

“And if we were being more open about it, we could do a lot more to stabilize society,” Alexandria said. “Try to get more people to become heroes, and try for less parahuman deaths overall.”

Contessa wasn’t surprised that Alexandria, and likely Eidolon as well, were already on board. They had all done and condoned terrible things, and some of them felt worse about it than others, but all of them wished they could do more good and less evil.

“Auspice did say in her letter to ‘stop being evil’,” Doctor Mother murmured when nobody spoke for a long moment. “Well then. Do you all agree that this is the best course of action?”

“I don’t see any other options, so yes, I agree,” Eidolon said.

Alexandria nodded. “I agree, as well.”

Cauldron’s new path was decided. And Contessa hadn’t even needed Path to Victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this, the alternate take is finally over. A little abrupt, but I did not intend for it to be this long in the first place. A couple thousand word one-shot, I said. It’ll be quick, I said. There won’t be that many conversations, I said. And then it ended up being half the length of the entire original story. I did want there to be more scenes of Auspice vacationing and the PRT reacting to her, but it’s already so long as it is and the scenes got repetitive, so I decided not to add any more.


End file.
